Being born bald is a dangerous matter which requires much security. Imagine that you raise a hairless kid. Such a terrible feeling, right? That’s what my mother felt.
Imagine your head is nothing but a naked ball while you live in a world where everybody wears feathers, leather, and golden wigs.
Ashamed of my baldness, creeping toward the ground holes like a rabbit.
I was seeking to hide in a secret place between some person’s thighs or deeply in the cave of an eye.
The story began when the authorities decided to cut off the umbilical cord of the pregnant women themselves to make sure there is no mother carrying a dreamful child.
I still remember how I slept wide-eyed in my mother’s womb.
My body quivered like a candy-shaped wish. I was dreaming of swallowing the delicious sky and going far away with my limitless ideas.
The officials stopped in their positions feeling trapped. This happens every time they find a newborn child shaking hands with colorful imagination.
Nothing scarier than having a third eye, they thought, raising their weapons toward us.
My mother fell on her knees & the moment her salty tears settled on my little head didn’t leave me.
Amirah Al Wassif is an award-winning published poet. Her poetry collection “for those who don’t know chocolate” was published in February 2019 by Poetic Justice Books & Arts. Her illustrated children book “The Cocoa Boy and Other Stories” was published in February 2020. Her poetry collection “how to bury a curious girl” was published by Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company.
Her poem “Hallucinations” was nominated for the Science Fiction Poetry Rhysling Award.
Her poems have appeared in several prints and online publications including South Florida Poetry, Birmingham Arts Journal, Hawaiʻi Review, The Meniscus, Chiron Review, The Hunger, Writers Resist, Right Now, and others.
Main Squeeze Literary Journal 