Dishevelment: A Sonnet by Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt

Dishevelment

While all the salons are closed and we’re closeted at home,

our hair continues to grow. It pushes forward,

reaches record lengths, exposes shameless roots.

Shipwrecked, desperate, we scour our cupboards for sheers,

study YouTube tutorials. Make feeble attempts to snip, pluck, trim. 

Alas! We’ve lost our shape, our bob, our look. Our colour has faded.

And hair dye—that most magical potion—is nowhere to be had.

Store shelves are bare. Even Amazon’s pockets are empty.

Some small-minded, nefarious soul has hoarded it all.

Let the universe pronounce a sentence! Show no mercy.

Like the envious in Dante’s Purgatorio, let the sinner’s eyes be sewn shut

while we, in our despondent, humbled state, reach for beanies,

scarves and baseball caps. Turn our mirrors to the wall.

Yield to our collective dishevelment.

Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt’s stories, poems and essays have been published in Best Canadian Essays 2019 and Best Canadian Essays 2015, The Antigonish Review (forthcoming), Grain, EVENT, Prairie Fire, Malahat Review, subTerrain, carte blanche, Room, Crux, The Centrifugal Eye, Qarrtsiluni, The Occupy Anthology and Water Lines: New Writing from the Eastern Townships of Quebec.

Tanya has been nominated for a National Magazine Award as well as a Western Magazine Award and received a Canada Council Grant for her memoir manuscript, Peacekeeper’s Daughter. She holds an MA from McGill and an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC.

Read more about Tanya and her writing at https://tanyaallattbellehumeur.com/

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