and it is morning. You start with the scissors
pressed to your jaw. It is like there are
thousands of tourists falling from your head
to the floor. By afternoon, one cigarette and
a baby diapered five times, you have
neatened up your eyebrows, waxing them
thinner and thinner until you are feeling
bottomless like the way space seems
to be in the movies, like Heaven, each
planet retracting away from us like
tongues. By 4 p.m., you start rushing, your
husband will be home soon and he
disapproves of things like this: the rough
angle of hairs at your ears, seeming
bitten by weird hybrid animals. Every hair
is short enough now. You get the razor.
There is something primal about it: woman
at mirror with weapon. A half an hour goes
by, you’re digging at the scalp: the
clutter there, the coats that have been hung,
heavy with rain, for years. It is never enough
to say I wasn’t ready for a baby, or you.
You need to show the teeth marks around
your hairline: you were dragged here in the
mouth of something big and wild. And it is dark
out now, your hairless head is a heron or red
moon. You hand your husband that which
you have removed, like a murmur. And it is dark,
the baby is weeping like a sad old woman
seated in the other room