When Someone Else Owns Your Hair

Fingers slow,

fingering a stray lock caught

between thumb and uncertain forefinger.

The touch lingers longer than expected,

like a border crossed without maps.

The hair falls differently now,

something shifted in that quiet theft,

a line erased, a boundary blurred.

I watch the hesitant fingers

turn what was mine into a stranger's weight.

The room smells faintly of shampoo

and unfamiliar hands,

a trace of a past I thought I owned,

now folded and pressed

beneath the soft invasion.

I pull back the chair,

feeling the ghost of that careless touch,

a tremble beneath the skin,

a knot undone where control used to live.