Shall I compare our love to my eyebrows-wild and waxed:
…and i arrive at the salon. 3:25p.m.
Third Wednesday of the month.
All kids in tow.
Resting my neck in that uncomfortable U of the sink
listening to Maxine, my ebrowist, repeat her waxing mantra-
Girl, your eyebrows grow so fast
so thick
so wild.
between clinched teeth (I dare not move my face and lose my eyelashes too)
I know right? With the inflection the young people use.
Months later, in the shower I compare our love to my eyebrows:
waxed and wild
like Layla on the cusp of two-years old, like Quincy
after too long playing Michael Jackson Experience, to Neko
clapping loud and fast and yelling Yeah, baby! when his favorite
football team runs another awesome play.
To them all: jumping up and down and screaming like their feet are on fire
when they hear your key in the door,
Daddy’s home–his eyebrows too
wild in love.
And I compare their thickness to a chocolate milkshake
from Mickey-D’s that always tears my stomach to pieces and
leaves it in knots and still I drink it anyway,
’cause it’s good.
Like his favorite meatloaf, seasoned perfectly a mile high and just as wide
with a side of mashed potatoes and gravy, black-eyed peas.
Fresh picked: but I digress.
After waxing there are some hairs that lie
all askew against my skin and out of place
even after the hot ripping away
of the most obvious culprits, driven from their follicles
dew drops of hot wax lying in wait for a final dabbing.
Some are too stubborn to leave and get
picked away painfully with tweezers.
Those that remain take shape, clipped into near
perfect arches–grounding the face, framing the eye.
That’s our love: wild, waxed, picked, clipped
Plucked into the shape of a union unique only to us, two.
We frame most perfectly.
When things are
smooth, there is no makeup required.
And yet
the inner corner of the left brow reveals a tiny tuft of hair,
Maxine can never get to do right. That tiny group reaches up
in rebellion; in reverence; in sheer arrogance to the order
created by the shaping process, an homage to imperfection.
