Beauty has become an action,
a thing I do to myself.

When the white man
glared me up and down

as he passed by my bench on the sidewalk,
mumbled something about me

having a bad hair day when I was not,
I looked at him bored, took another bite

of my cake and said,
I'm having a phenomenal hair day

and went to class shortly after.

And when, in that same afternoon,
I choked out an immediately tearful,

thank you to the Black woman
who stopped me mid-sandwich

to say she loved my hair, I sat
for a few minutes longer

under this shaded bench,
stunned by the irony of the body.

My friend's mother reminds me
that I always have a free trim waiting

in her home; she lists
a million and one remedies

for my too dry ends, tells
old, recovered stories

while parting my hair, guiding the comb
from my nose to my neck, and

nothing is personal but this:
piles of my snipped excess crowning

the floor, kitchen tiles supporting decades
of promises in calloused hands,

there is always someone to take care of
There are always those fluent

in bringing dead things back to life.