Strands drift to the sink, the floor, the salad.
I’ll soon have candy-floss fibers spun over a visible scalp.
Why it’s leaving is anyone’s guess—I don’t tease 

or blow-dry—but the satin headdress of hair I inherited 
and wore to shreds has gone French, 
becoming hairs, plural, no more mass noun, each thread 

taking a singular path away from the tribe of filaments 
that once clung like corn silk and now wiggle free,
maverick follicles setting forth.
                        

Everywhere you look, young women—
pushing an espresso lever, 

blinking over a purple-monkey mask,
walking with a pile of books,

swaying down the road in roller skates,
an endless supply of fledgling females

displacing those who siphon off
to start businesses or bear children.

They’re lovelier than they know
and in gangs, their beauty grows exponentially

—arms around waists, wearing cat ears
and flaunting new tattoos as their minds leap, 

ready to master the world.
They can’t imagine a man will ever 

get in the way of this casual power
but they know the novel of their lives will start 

with a swing and end with a slow tick.
Inside each of them, an old woman dwells

and they’re racing to cram in the subplots
before she tells them it’s time to take a nap.

They don’t own wisdom yet, but they can
feel the kernel of it in their bones, 

which are still sturdy and full of calcium,
and in their joints, which rotate smooth as butter, 

and in their skin, which is sowing the grins 
that will become furrows.
                        

Though I’ve never seen a wild bear up close,
I’ve sat on the same porch where 
my sister-in-law once caught a bruin

staring at her from the bushes
and I’ve studied video footage of a grizzly 
busting down a front door 

somewhere out West. 
Lately I can’t I tear my eyes from a live feed
of bears cooling off in waterfalls, 

salmon hanging from their mouths,
a languid utopian community 
that calls to me—a mama bear 

who flees clanging pans, 
bumbles through thorns for a blackberry,
claims a bulky sleep.