The hairdresser

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.