In 2006 I was diagnosed with cancer and had to undergo chemotherapy. My hair was the longest it's ever been in my entire life, and I knew I would lose it. I decided it would be best to just get it cut very short and then maybe shave it, once it started coming out. I went to a JC Penny’s hair salon in south Texas and requested a hair-cut. When the gentleman asked me what I would like, I had a picture to show him, but I knew that I wouldn’t really like it because I didn’t want to cut my hair. So, I told him that I probably wouldn’t like it and that I was only getting my hair cut because I would be starting chemotherapy and it would come out. He was so kind to me and said that he never took walk-in clients, but just decided to do so today and that he had a wig he would give me if I could come back tomorrow to get it. True to his word, he gave me a very nice red wig (I’ve always wanted red hair). I didn’t know it at the time, but after buying several other wigs myself, I realized he had given me a very expensive wig. The kindness of this total stranger still warms my heart when I think about it many years later.

She grasps ribbons from air

and weaves them into life.

Spirit exhales nomadic echo

like a thousand birds on a wire

taking shameless flight at her will.

Wild gypsy woman whizzes past

unforeseen curves in the road,

speeding so fast, leaving only

remnants of her shadow.

Tucks sun in her bosom

to light life’s adventures,

sets the moon askance

on head as mock halo.

Quaffs freedom

in the cup of her hand,

running barefoot

untamed and wild.

Dances in savage abandon

in raindrops of passion

answering only to herself

as she rounds

the endless loops

of tomorrow,

feral and free.