For Pam

Pam, my map,
I read recently that when the self comes you shouldn’t turn it away.
But I think I’ve been turning it away mostly.
I can’t look at myself in the mirror when any stylist cuts my hair.
Please don’t think it was just you.
Remember when you asked if I wanted layers,
But I didn’t know what layers were?
When I said I was going to move away, you said you thought that made sense for me,
That I struck you as someone who could move away,
And I appreciated that from you though at the time I wasn’t sure why.
Anyway, I said yes and you gave me the layers,
Then at school someone said to me,
Did you know your hair’s framing your face like that,
All femininely?
I had not and started pinning it up for Survey of American Lit.
Pam, did you know?
Honestly, my sense is that stylists sense the gender before we closeted do.
Alas, I moved away and wore my hair short for a decade.
More than, in fact.
It’s just so funny that you lived across the street from my parents
And I watched you from my bedroom window
As you mowed your lawn and trimmed the hedges and got divorced.
My parents said your ex came to see your kid on Christmas Eve
And brought a gift card for $25 to Walgreen’s as his gift.
I have often admired you, I’m saying.
In the eighth grade, my mom took me to a stylist at the Eastridge Mall
Whose fingernails were so red I fell in love with her.
She said to another stylist, But honey your legs are killer,
Which I also loved.
Then she rid me of the bowl-cut I’d had since I was born.
I was so apprehensive and scared about it, I recall,
So wholly frightened by the change,
Yet she said to put the gel in like this,
With ease and finesse,
And now look at yourself.
And Pam? I did try.
I thought, maybe I could be a person.
Maybe live some around here?
I suppose I’m still trying to convince myself of it.
The first stylist I had in the new town talked Buffy the Vampire Slayer with me,
The second didn’t like talking all that much,
And the third asked me to send her a poem and then never responded when I did.
Can I remember the poem now?
Yes, I talked about pollution and pooping.
And also pain…
So pretty on-brand, all things considered.
Pam—
Do you ever feel like you don’t get the point of flowers
Though in your head you know it?
Or how about worrying about bees dying out
Both for the bees’ sake as well as everyone else’s,
Because one thing you never could bury despite your burying skill
Was the faith that beauty can and should flourish?
How’s your daughter in… is it Nashville?
She’s a nurse in a baby ward, right?
Sometimes I think of you like that, like a nurse,
Like a healer to guide us babies toward warmth,
And I promise I am trying to do the same for others now, and pay it forward how I can,
To see in them what they need seen
When they need it seen.
Then cut loose the rest, like you did,
And coax them out of their bowls,
Up over that lip and rim,
To frame them so the picture looks how it should finally,
With their cheekbones in the light.
Their curtains opened instead of drawn.
And say now look at yourself.
Honey, look:
That person’s absolutely killer.