Dying Hair
by Darlene L. Young, pub. in Segullah, Spring 2008
Leaning over the bathtub
rinsing the dye out of my hair,
I notice that the droplets splattered on the porcelain
look like blood.
It reminds me of my mother,
whose death had nothing to do with blood
or bathtubs or hair-dye,
but who had always prided herself
on not coloring her hair:
“It crosses the line into vanity,”
she would say.
She lost her salty hair to chemo.
But by the time she died it had grown back,
softer, richer, darker than it was before,
as if her body had decided not
to waste time going gray again,
or fate had granted one small graceful
compensation at the end,
a last reminder in her pale and fading life
of the woman she had been.
This poem copyright 2009 by Darlene L. Young. I love to share my work! Feel free to pass it around, but please make sure you copy it in its entirety and include my name. Thank you!
