“My roots are showing,”

I tell the receptionist at the beauty shop

And she tells me it will be about fifteen minutes

But she doesn’t count on the teenage boy

Ahead of me with his shaved sides

And long mane down the middle

Of his head and fraction-of-an-inch

Consultations with his mother.

Thirty minutes later the dissatisfied

Boy begrudgingly gives up the chair.

It’s my turn. For the first time I see

The beautician close up. She has a pierced

Eyebrow. I cringe, feeling the pain she

Obviously doesn’t, and tell her

My roots are showing.

She brushes in the color, then leaves,

Returns with a middle-aged man,

And I’m sitting there with my hair

Standing on end and color smudges

On my forehead, looking like the hostess

Of a late night horror movie

But it’s what I have to do

When my roots are showing.

He takes the chair next to mine

Male pattern baldness has left him

With a few strands on top and a ring around the edges.

Half an hour later, it’s time to pull through my color

And the beautician is still snipping this guy’s hair

One wisp at a time, and I long for the days when

A man wouldn’t be caught dead in a beauty shop.

But my roots are showing.