By Juanita Rey
My friend Aury cradled my head,
pretended her hand skidding across my hair
was running water.
We were in the kitchen
in the heat of the summer,
ten years old,
pretending we were wealthy clients
in some fancy beauty parlor.
Even our mothers never
went to such places
but we’d peered in windows,
witnessed the silky shine
that emerged
from busy fingers, creamy lather.
Such a contrast to our tangled curls,
our hurried baths.
Every age we were
the arch of a brow,
the jiggle of a waist,
would imitate the women
we would someday be.
Even now
when I bend backward in the shower
and close my eyes
to avoid the shampoo sting,
it still feels like this is a game I’m playing.
I’m always ahead of myself.
I can never catch up.
Juanita Rey is a Dominican poet who has been in this country five years. Her work has been published in Pennsylvania English, Opiate Journal, Petrichor Machine and Porter Gulch Review.
