DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE Poem: I Don’t Know how to Take Care of my Hair, by Meghan Henderson

Yes. There’re white men in the mix. You don’t get blue eyes without a few crossing oceans.
Maybe that’s as much the problem, though.
I don’t know how to take care of my hair.
A perfectly white kind of color, this brown hair.
I’ve always worn it long.
As long as I can.
Is it me? Am I making progress on the length but just can’t see it? Is it as long as I dreamed of having it a year ago, but reinvented the goal without noticing?
It’s just hair.
Fine and aggressively straight.
Not like white hair.
Here I am. White hands, white techniques telling me how to make it grow longer and… not working.
Is this a consequence of a white father sending his daughters to catholic school to protect them from being seen as…not white? Granddaughters and granddaughters on and the hair still asking for care I don’t know how to give.
Is this all the length grandmothers and grandmothers back could have gotten? Are separations making me dream of things that were never possible to begin with?
I don’t know how to take care of my hair.
Everyone has something, right? That thing that would make their mirror self look like the person they expect to see. Longer hair wouldn’t even fix it.
With white hair that liked white techniques, I’d still have high cheek bones.
With the right techniques to take care of my hair, I’d still have blue eyes.
A satisfying reflection and I’d still be separated.

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