Her Hands in My Hair...

Florence W. Williams crossed over to the ancestral zone on Wednesday, December 12, 2007. Born November 8, 1911 in the Elmwood section of Philadelphia, PA. she was 96 years old. My dear lovely auntie, who used to straighten the thick of my hair on Saturday mornings in my mama's kitchen. I will miss her hands in my hair, miss her stern look when I was actin' a fool, her beautiful smile, the twinkle in her eye when she shared secrets with me that shaped me into the woman I am today. Later, I'd grow locks and she never quite adjusted to the style to say the least.

She promised me one night while I was sleeping, to sneak into my room with scissors sharpened and cut off one by one my twisted locks. Her guilded instrument, seal and deliver the Cyclops. My crown lopped and falling beneath shoulders, bare ropes tangled. My strength cascaded round my head as one eye opens--splay the wounded mane, a trophy in the darknes. Steal the lambs lost, dare the dead. What did she know of summer shadows draped on bedroom walls? Of cracks that sing soprano under floorboards. Splintered rough and calloused claws of sparrows, small breasted summoner of twilight vigils beneath towers crumbling covenants with God? Still I loved her irons that curled the blackness. The sizzle of blue unguents and green pomades that tamed wild roots. Ordered them lie down, preserved in smoky parlors, shoot by shoot on steamy Saturdays. "Be still" and enter Shirley's temple, refined with offerings of singed rags and burnt sacrifice of earlobes elegant on protracted afternoons of beauty. A list of stylized possibilities that were never mine.