My Ode to Hair (3 years in the making, but it's finally complete)

I am my follicles’ keeper. I like to call it the dreadlocked door to my new growth psyche. It’s attached to me continuously like the press and curled strands of grass on brunette soil. Like the spiky jet-black words on this thinning elderly white sheet. My scalp’s thread count is infinite. But just like a sensitive blanky belonging to an infant or duvet covers to an elitist, my follicles look down upon being bathed, dried, and lotioned up in anything generic.

My raggedy door opens up and gladly welcomes in the trusting hands. They come armed with weapons of mass arson. Gasoline tanks of tasteful tea tree shampoo set my abandoned scalp ablaze putting an end to unattended rotten carrot oil, stale shea butter, and unappetizing frosted flakes. But the fire rages on as those tiny but hulk strong hands whether it being mine, mommy’s, or a stylist’s allows it to spread by way of a methodic front and back rotation. If lathering, scrubbing, and rinsing, was a composition with repeat as its chorus, then this ballad would be entitled, “SSH” in ME Flat, because total silence is necessary to enjoy it in its entirety. I always know when the song is on its last verse when small hoses or 7-11 big gulp cups of 80-degree high and 50- degree low water put these flames out resulting in screams. But my scalp’s screams come with ease and a smile when whispering that 2-letter word “AH”. Finally fully tamed and put out, I hear the individual locks and scalp squeak like Alvin, Simon, and Theodore letting those hands know that was job well done. We are happily hygienic.

My follicles’ offspring are elongated and substantial like the Bible, but just not as sanctified. However, this dude named Sampson wishes to refute that. I always envisioned Jesus and my genes deliberating for 9 months straight negotiating on the fate of it, never reaching a compromise. But somehow on the 13^th day of the 1^st month, God simply said, “And let there be hair”, allowing me, the recipient, to mold something that could bring a tear to his unknown eye. And ever since that day, my hair has been through genesis and exodus more times than most, but that’s just the beauty of expansion and transition.