Before I Could Take It Back

She asked: "You sure?"

and I said yes

but I wasn't.

She had her hands in my hair

before I could change my mind.

Her fingers moving through it

like she knew me.

Like she had the right.

No one's touched my hair like that in months.

This stranger. This woman with her scissors open.

More intimate than it should be,

this intimacy between customer and stylist,

this small violence

we agree to call a service.

I watched it fall.

The length I'd been growing for a year.

Just falling to the floor.

Pile of dark. Longer than I expected.

More than I'd realized I had.

When it was done I didn't recognize myself.

My neck exposed. Cold.

The back of my head a stranger's face.

I came home and found pieces in the bathroom.

On the floor. In the drain.

Still shedding days later.

My hair still leaving me

even after she was done with it.

She'd touched it more in thirty minutes

than anyone had in months.

And I'd said yes

when I meant maybe.

When I meant no.

When I meant: I'm not sure

if I want this version of myself.

But the scissors were already moving.

The hair was already falling.

And consent—real consent—

isn't something you can take back

once you've opened your mouth to say it.