The first time I had my hair removed from my face by a professional,
the wax ripped my skin off, layer after layer, like a large onion.
My mother spackled thick, refrigerated baby lotion
on red flesh that no longer peeled off. Chul, it’s natural,
she said, pointing to a faint sideburn near her right ear.
But mine was abundant, velvety corn hairs inside husks
that had to be peeled away to see the buttery kernels underneath.
Natural, but I dreamed of a husband back then. One day, I found
a comment under a picture of a stranger with a shaggy beard.
My brother was tagged: yo, that’s Sakib’s sister’s doppelgänger.
I was on my way to guitar lessons, then Pure Math tutoring.
They were postponed. How could I go? No one had told me yet I was different
in a good way. Study breaks I started spending in the family bathroom:
tweezing off follicles one by one or shaving to tiny blunt squares
every three days. Puberty, processed food, nobody’s looking that closely at you,
but I blamed myself. Spent my pocket money on protracted beauty-parlor sessions
where the red wax & Nair the Garo ladies laid on my cheeks would scald them,
spattered yellow with sores that turned eventually into dark seed-shaped scars.
Hairless, I—
I lost what was mine.
