by Annie Cowell
My friend’s hair fell out.
Head, brows, lashes, body; every single hair.
One day she was lustrous, the next day naked.
No explanation and no cure. Of course
she will not die; there are
far worse things to endure.
But for a while she could not face her world.
The daily chores, so simple and routine
became an endless round of hows and whys,
of sympathetic nods or stifled smiles.
And she felt lost, stripped bare;
her confidence destroyed.
And so she had her brows tattooed,
glued on false eyelashes,
bought wigs in different styles.
Found ways she could disguise the
bald and brutal fact that
she would never feel, or look the same again.
Annie Cowell is a former teacher living in Cyprus. She has poems forthcoming in a number of publications. @AnnieCowell3