Diana Pinckney is the winner of the Ekphrasis Prize, Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Prize and Prime Number Magazine’s 2018 Poetry Prize. Published in RHINO, Cave Wall, Green Mountains Review, Tar River Poetry, The Pedestal Magazine, Still Point Arts Quarterly, & Connotation Press, and other journals and anthologies, Pinckney has five books of poetry, including 2015’s The Beast and The Innocent. ---------
Super Cuts, Six Months After My Daughter’s Death
The stylist snip snips my hair, shorter
and shorter. As she works, we talk.
You have children, she asks. Yes,
I answer. Do you? Oh, I have two girls.
How about you? Three, I say, my voice
tight, clipped as the gray strands covering
the floor. My daughter’s hair was long
and red, until it was blonde. She loved
the sun. A little less on the sides, please.
Why didn’t I say I have two children, sons,
and that would have been that. Except that
will never be that. I will always have three
children. Do they live here, she asks.
The sons do. My daughter lives nowhere
and everywhere. It’s good, she says, you
have a girl, too. Yes, I answer, it is good.