For Kimberly...

When I was what I would now call a girl, I lived frivolously, never lighting on one thing for long. I had blonde hair that was my vanity and power.

Like Samson I gathered my pride and beauty from the strands that tangled about my face. I used my hair as a veil for the things about myself that I didn't like. My lazy eye, my crooked teeth, my father's nose, the fat that I now know wasn't real.

My mane was something that everyone else saw and some would comment and others would ask and a few would touch. But I have no memories of my hair from that time besides one where I released my hair from a clasp after a long day of work and I felt it swish down my back in a wash of pleasure.

So not only was I frivolous but I was vane about something that I don't even remember. From those years there is only one memory that I can conjure up for hair, hair that wasn't even my own.

It was yours, during one of our hot summer days on a blacktop that has since been paved over. Your hair was braided and the loops that twisted over themselves three times three were gold and blonde and brown. Fluttering behind you were long wisps that had escaped, tangling in the wind and heat.

And I loved your hair that day and was inspired by that memory to braid my tresses in a new kind of heat, Texas swelter, a few recent years ago.

And now I wear Kimberly braids and think of you as I feel their weight on my shoulders and their wisps tangle in my eyelashes.