Prena Poetry

i heard your hair has grown longer

you wear it long

parted in middle

like the roads you have walked on

long, simple and halfway

where you have built a house

from the bricks your father laid on

i heard you are married now and that

you have a daughter

who sits by the window of that house

as she writes math and watches the birds

by your garden with marigold

and pumpkins next to the orange trees

i heard those marigolds served as a garland

the day your lover vowed you the life till death

so you wear your hair long

parted in middle

it smells of coconut

and generations of women before you

i heard it sweeps the earth

when you sit by the bamboo hassock

and knit a cape for your daughter

but i heard you trimmed your daughter’s hair

short, and tied it up

before it grows long,

long like the shores

that holds back a woman on the sand

so when she sweats

she does not have to part it

or agonize over the split ends

of a fate that she cannot control

i heard you trimmed her hair short

vowing her a life even beyond death

i heard she is the first in the family

with a short strong hair

that sometimes points up at the sky