Hair Was Just Hair

we're a lost people.

parents still wearing the lasting effects of parents who bore the direct effects of colonization, parents who look at the hair that grows out of their scalp and label it a sin to keep.

but before... a very long long time ago.

hair was just hair.

even on men.

their hair was theirs to keep, to style, to cherish.

then the white man said it was a sin, so he put a razor on our head and scraped against our skin.

because if you want to strip a human of its identity, you pull at their source, and what better place than our gravity-defying force?

coming under the guise of Christianity, he had to make you believe it wasn't insanity to stare at the fro that rises to the air, the hair that catches the suns' glare and call it ugly and unkempt, fairs but really unfair.

to look at the way we loved, the way we lived, and call it abominable.

they get to keep their down-flowing hair that requires very little care, no more than a few strokes of a brush, but ours that requires way more than a rush, is sinful.

if so sinful, why so detailed?

why can it hold braids and maps, directions and shape?

why does it open up like a flower and squeeze up like a sponge?

we are not the sin.

we are the originals, and our hair is a beacon of hope, love, culture, familiarity.

men should grow their hair out if it so pleases them.