ManicDDaily

Note that this pic only suits the poem in the most metaphoric way.

Falls

It felt as if she’d put a fake eyelash
on her whole head, as if her whole head flirted
with the world, batting itself with the flippancy
of hair curled,
though it was just a fall of auburn hair (framing her face)
and not
from grace,
a purchased dangle of pageboy mod
that made my mother
a strange woman in my eyes, that is,
a woman–
a role that with the bald
totality of youth, I thought, reserved
for me–

In the same way that many
years later,
when I met her at an airport,
I saw a loop of dry toilet paper
dangling from the back waist
of her navy pants suit
and understood, in one fell swoop,
that she’d become
an old woman,

and that I would too,
(if lucky),
which silenced my flip
remark, as, masking
the movement, I caught the tissue, curling it
into a wad–

In those frames, time’s lash
snaps us to, eyes opening
in batted blinks–
Real enough, though–

*********************
My drafty offering for my own prompt on With Real Toads to write something stemming from the idea of fall.  The fall at issue is a hair piece of a type that was once quite popular, longer hair to be worn almost like a hat, with a hairband covering the place where the hair attached. (Unlike a wig, a fall was worn for a change of style primarily, not to hide any bald spot.) 

The pic (mine) doesn’t really go with the piece, but I just liked it.