AFTER MY MOTHER SHAVES MY HEAD FOR THE FIRST TIME

 Erin O’Malley

She tries to run

her fingers through the memory

of the hair above my neck,

but like a beast in May, I’ve been shorn

of the need for a woman

to braid my mane. She says

all of your hair is gone

as if gone isn’t a place, too.

She kills the clippers’ hum

and looks at her hands, the mess

I’ve made of her prayers

to a man she believes

to be her father as much as my own,

although I am related to neither

my mother nor her god.

She tells me to go

find a broom.

I pick up the stray

needles of hair from the floor

in fistfuls, but we are too clean-cut

for family fights. I’ve never

looked like my mother,

but the least I could’ve done for her

was look like someone else’s daughter.

But isn’t this all I’ve ever wanted—for the curtain

of my hair to fall to the ground like night,

the small planet of my scalp

gleaming toward someday

looking like myself? To be my mother’s blood-

less child, endangered by my

own kin and still the offspring

that outlives another knife’s dull edge—

for me to survive her

holding a blade to my neck?

Erin Jin Mei O'Malley is a queer Asian American writer. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Redivider, wildness, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Cosmonauts Avenue, and others. They have received a scholarship from the Lambda Literary Foundation and nominations for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. You can follow them @ebxydreambxy