Chastened Inspiration

I'm not one for prevailing methods of primping--

daily hair-styling, make up, and hot oil treatments

have always seemed, to me, a waste of time and effort.

I have my own sense of winsomeness, my own

habits and ways of enhancing my outward strengths

that don't include padding the pockets of Paul Mitchell,

Ulta, Mac, and Chi.

But now and again, I get inspired to experiment

with tools and treatments unfamiliar to me,

by nobody's fault but my own:

You'd think coconut oil is coconut oil,

but you'd be wrong. I learned the hard way

as I meticulously massaged coconut oil

scented vaseline into my scalp, enthusiastically ensured

the petroleum jelly reached every hair follicle from the source

outward, down the shaft length of every hair,

to the very split ends I was resolved to address.

Ten washes later (six with dish soap),

I'm finally feeling a little less like a duck in an oil slick.

My hair is more than a little worse for wear,

my inspiration for beauty treatments chastened.

Milestones

No one warns a woman about the quiet

milestones--less celebrated than Double Digits,

Sweet Sixteen, Twenty-One, and the year 

our insurance payments decrease dramatically,

magically with the turning of a quarter-century.

The Silent Others we don't mark until they're behind,

sometimes years gone--

the passage from Maiden to Matron;

the moments that sneak up behind and whisper

"You've missed your youth." Your washboard belly,

your innocence gone for good, but you don't remember 

ever having fully appreciated that form of beauty.

You spent an inordinate amount of time shamefacedly

focusing on your spindly naivete until you found yourself

entrenched in this new form of loveliness.

You'd better get cracking learning to believe this frame

and faltering wisdom are desirable in whatever forms

you need to be found desirable.

What a loss to waste this time, find yourself

silently, irretrievably lost; tenuously alien again.