I wonder what the white woman
with hair half dreadlocked,
half straight as a bone
felt when the black poet told her
she couldn’t have her hair like that
not directly in so many words,
but through all the words she wrote
when another white woman
asked if she could pretty please
have her hair like that for a holiday look.
at least this white woman committed
to a few good years,
not just a month or so
from the length and fatness
of her matted blonde coiled tresses.
she told me she lived in Kenya,
found it hard to integrate,
which we both knew was because
she was a white woman with dreadlocks,
though neither of us said it.
she assumed I was from Ghana of course,
didn’t ask,
nodded her dreadlocked head
to get me to agree with her,
tell her she was right.
I fingered my own half white half black
soft straight kinky curly dreadlocks
starting to gild at the ends,
thought about all it took me to get here,
smiled, and turned away.
