Lacquered acrylics fix between follicles of scalp,

Searching for a place in which hair isn’t woven tightly,

Wishing she could dig below the surface,

With wishful thinking that the interior feels like everything the exterior doesn’t

Working hands gather new growth,

Knead from root to curly-q,

Palm-rolling loc’d kinks,

Twisting, and twisting, and twisting,

Like adolescents entrapped in swing-sets from a lack of supervision,

And an ecstasy for amusement

Clear gel atop spare toothbrushes smooth ‘young hair’ along edges,

Following the mazes in which curls congregate,

Laying down hairs, as if they were an infant past their bedtime

Youth hopscotch on the playground’s sidewalk,

With the rhythm of their movement,

Their multicolored beads, bobbles, and butterflies bounce against their cranium,

Flopping against the winds,

As their tennis shoes drag across the pavement

In out, in out, in out, in out…..

Mother sits atop wicker chair, creaking with each motion,

Daughter huddled between legs,

Arm stretched back, resting upon mother’s thighs,

Palms clasped, as not to fiddle with her hair,

Feet clenched, as not to fall weary of the soft, tingle the time in which she’s sat has induced

Brooding and sulking as her mother frays with her coils and kinks

Dipping synthetic braid ends into steaming water,

As to ensure no unraveling occurs

Middle, right, left, middle, right, left, middle, right, left

Weathered hands follow a sequence,

As plaits entwine,

Child searches for the ends of hair,

Wondering: how much longer?

Lucy runs loops through Jayla’s hair with her number two pencil,

Lisa pulls at it to see if she feels pain,

As if it weren’t real,

As if she were inhuman

Are they to blame?

For they don’t know the love and labor, and Sunday afternoon it took to get her hair sitting pretty and plain,

For they don’t know the hair that stems from their follicles is the quintessence of beauty,

While her follicles float towards heaven, but are so quickly silenced and tamed

But who am I to talk?

I too would be enamored by humans who could attach braids to scalp and still hold their heads high,

Attach a pre-fix to their strangled African roots, and still hold their heads high,

Entwine their interrupted history into strands of synthetic, and still hold their heads high,

Grow hair towards God, but still carry burdens that lay across their backs,

Still holding their heads high

Cultivate hair that sheds within itself,

Like the languages once spoken by their ancestors,

Now turning up anew,

African American Vernacular English isn’t incorrect,

It’s simply a dialect; broken English,

Origins in West and Central Africa,

As not to be infiltrated by the overseer,

Colloquialisms and nuances roll across my tongue,

Like the spiraling, springy curls rods induce in my hair before morning

Lacquered acrylics fix beneath silk,

Constricting around cranium,

Sustaining the days’ style, for the morning;

I lay my head upon my pillow

Resting my eyes,

And putting to sleep all of my worries that lay beneath my hair

Troy, 14, is a freshman at Douglas County High School.

VOX invites your poetry, stories and art, too!

Email media@voxatl.org, and include your name, age, school (if applicable) and contact information to submit your original work. To participate in Atlanta Word Works free poetry and spoken word workshops at VOX, contact Sarah@VOXAtl.org. The next free Atlanta Word Works workshop is Saturday (Sept. 24.).