A Black Girl Takes Her Braids Out and Experiences a Death
For my sister

I.

A Black girl dips her braids in hot water
and becomes baptized. The water, 
a boiling reminder of how dangerous it is
to make things stay. Steel pots seal in work
done by bent fingers shellacked in shea butter
and blue magic. The shine evidence of her rebirth. 

II.

Deft fingers sync in meditation of
untangling synthetic fibers.
Our hands hold a funeral 
for loss strands and my scalp
pulses in mourning. 

We are tender, alive, undone.
I stretch my hair past sternum, 
and roped in communion, it breathes.
The shedded lie untouched,
black bundles of coils, and crinkles.

A day of nutmeg and blue vanilla
becomes a burial for old comforts 
and coarse desires. Our shoulders, 
light with the weight of nostalgia,
unfurl, and our necks house grief.

In reuniting with my roots,
I become intimate with the loss of ease, 
of a memory nestled between plaits, and wonder 
if in death, life will feel like bitter relief. 
The sting of release that comes 

with losing a reality no longer yours. 
We write an epitaph under the setting sun, 
for all the me’s lost to the fires of water. 
I capture the piled urn, eager to keep the small
pieces. To preserve an absolute life.