My braid lay in its secret autumnal gold and dusk brunette
coiled in a shoebox in her closet.
Furious and confusingly touched I returned it to it’s alter;
Saint's relics behind a mirrored sliding door.
The foot of virgin childhood hair intended for wigs and instead,
hoarded by my mother alongside cast-off teeth
and indecipherable journal entries
and Crayola drawings of fantastical horses
with stiff necks and stand up manes.