More Than a Haircut

2021 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST

BY GWEN PRIEST

Yesterday my child was a girl, all pigtails, dimples, bows, stolen powder-pink lipstick smeared on her freckled face.

Today they are new. The name we fought over in the birthing center left behind in a chat room.

Today they are brave, telling me their greatest fear: that finding themself might mean losing me –

Losing friends, family, God. There is so much to lose, not just a name or symbol, but a life when change demands its turn.

GWEN PRIEST is an award-winning poet, author, and editor. Her essays, poetry, and short stories can be found in several anthologies and in the Remington Review, Southeast Review, and NCLR (a 2018 finalist in this competition, published under the name Gwen Holt in the 2019 print issue). Her latest YA novels have been published with Owl Hollow Press. She currently lives in North Carolina and teaches high school English and Poetry at Longleaf School of the Arts.

Today I run the clippers over their head, my child wrapped in a black cape, tight but not choking, pieces of girlhood falling to the floor.

Tomorrow we will order a binder. We will work together to break anything that smothers who my child feels blossoming from their soul.

Tomorrow we will walk past the bathrooms with their block people in pants and skirt, and I will watch the door as they use the non-binary, family bathroom, somewhere in between.

Today, I realized my daughter was never mine. They are their own, twirling in a mass of boundaries, smashing into the beyond I didn’t know was there.

My dead expectations for this femaleassigned-at-birth to a world of boxes, now lay on the floor with light brown waves, the sun warming them with promise.

Her Release, 2010 (mixed media on plexiglass, 15x23) by Moriah LeFebvre

Durham, NC native MORIAH LEFEBVRE graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts and UNC Chapel Hill. She earned her MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts from Duke University. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions, including Through This Lens in Durham, the LGBTQ Center in Raleigh, and the ArtsCenter in Carrboro. Her art is included in the Rubenstein Arts Center Collection at Duke University and the Triangle Community Foundation Collection, also in Durham, among others. Her art has appeared in such publications as The Sun, Essere Magazine, and Cellar Door.