shaving your own head

I was right
about the itch,

something like a stare

dark and scattered as the stars
over my shoulders bare,

whispering, insistently
of all the ways to be

that I have left behind
as bones -
the buzzer picked them clean.

As open as a cloudless sky
and promising as spring,

one like me will live and die
in possibilities...

wind too shy to sing at all
and end somebody's doze -

simply, deeply, terrified
of hurting some bird's home -

cloud too heavy, choking on
the wash and thud of rain -

understanding now
the earthly reason for that strain -

If I were not enough
to be a beam upon this life -
if nothing worth escaping me
at all was born inside -

the fingers of it wouldn't
dare at all to poke or pry;
the feathers of it
would have never begged to know the sky -

but here I am - the lovely itch,
the tickle on my skin
telling me how much I've given up,
daring to live.

I meet the gaze of mirror-me
and ask them if we care:
'Fraid not - better, not afraid,
and better without hair!