Meesh Montoya
  • Home
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Blog

The hairdresser

7/11/2023

 

tilts your head so gently
with the tippy tips of the fingers
he has honed into machines
of exactitude
of precision
of efficiency
that it's almost as if he hasn't tilted your head at all
only suggested it right itself
like that stranger in the street
who chases you down
to bring you the hundred dollar bill you've dropped
or tell you that your dress is bunched up in your panties.
Not to revel in your stupidity,
but to share in your shame.
We've all been there, his fingers seem to say.
His fingers do not know 
that it's clinical.
That it's called ocular torticollis.
That you always tilt your head too much to one side
because when you tilt in the other direction,
you see double.
That you've been overcorrecting this way
for as long as you've been able
to hold your head up on your own.
That your double vision will never be corrected.
That it lives inside and alongside you
so that you sometimes forget
that no one else sees how you see.
No one, not even other eyes
with the same diagnosis
or bloodline
or blood type
or gross annual income
or body mass index.
He doesn't know any of this,
just nudges your head
to right it
so that he can trim your hair evenly
with hands so gentle
​they might have taken the hippocratic oath.

    Meesh Montoya

    You read my blog.
    Prepare to die.

    Archives

    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    September 2022
    July 2022
    February 2022
    September 2021
    August 2021
    May 2021
    February 2021
    September 2020
    June 2020
    February 2020
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018

    Categories

    All
    Carbon Footprint
    Climate Change
    Cryptocolonialism
    Disability
    Healing
    Judaism
    Manspreading
    Man Vs. Nature
    #metoo
    Nail Salons
    Plastic
    Poetry
    Puerto Rico
    Regret
    #strawban
    Teshuva
    #timesup
    U.S. Currency
    Yamim Nora'im

    RSS Feed

Home

Poetry

Fiction

Blog

Contact

  • Home
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Blog