Denim Jacket

When I was a young Black girl

My mother straightened my hair

With chemicals and hot metal tools

But still

It didn’t do that thing

Where you tuck some of it behind your ear

And the rest hangs in front

Like Mary-Kate and Ashley

My hair was straight

But it was limp and stiff at the same time

So it still wasn’t right

When I was a young Black lady

My mother stopped straightening my hair

Because I had moved away

And I was now in charge of it alone

It grew wild and curly

Like Angelou and Foxy

A halo that captured the scents of the day

That smelled like the walk I went on across campus

and the food I had eaten

and the library and everything else by the time I got home.

It was beautiful and free

And so was I

When I was a young Black woman

A strange man stole my joy

When he put his hands around my neck

And his strange tongue in places that strange tongues don’t belong

I did not feel beautiful and free

I wanted to be stripped bare

From everything I had been hiding behind

At 2 AM in twenty-fourteen

I took a pair of scissors

And inches of curls fell away

I became true

Finally like me

And my hair never grew much longer again

I could never stand it to be more than a few inches at time

I am once again beautiful and free

Simple, clean, and fresh

As All-American as a denim jacket

Authentic and unapologetic

At ease and confident

Assured and timeless

I used to wish my hair

Would make me as pretty as a white girl

Wearing a denim jacket on the cover of the J. Crew catalog

That I would look effortless and breezy

As I tucked my lock of hair behind my ear

And the tall blonde boy smiled down at me

My hair is still stiff and it is also soft

Strong and gentle

All the things a Black girl has to be in this country

Did you know

I still use my scissors to cut my own hair

Sometimes still at 2 AM

For old time’s sake

And I use my magic

to cut out spaces of healing and positive peace

The curls fall away

And fountains of truth of hope

Spring up in their place

I am a Black girl

Beautiful and free

Authentic and unapologetically All-American in my denim jacket