She grips a damp sponge while the needle
shoots under her skin, scorching the roots
that invade her chin—tenacious hair,
impervious to bleach, that only grows
stronger and thicker when plucked.
The current stings her eyes,
those crucial salty tide pools, 
locked in water under bedrock skull.

Why can’t she accept these hairs
that thrive in the shadow of her jaw?
Lots of lightly-bearded older women
appear sage and content.
Like men with bald bosoms,
they have broached the gap between the sexes,
reconciled with men and their own manliness.
No—she’s not ready.  She didn't get
to make the children she wanted.  She never grew
eyelashes and hair inside her womb.

Forgive her, then, the pretense
of unfinished youth in her middle age.
Her iron-flecked blood still pulses with the tide,
though vanity and death swim side by side.

Published in A Minor Magazine

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