The galaxy in an afro. It holds everything — joy, pain, memory, myth. I was thinking about how hair records poisons like arsenic. How it carries what we’ve survived. How it’s politicized.

Years ago, a white man looked at my fro and said loud enough for me to hear, something about loving his white girlfriend’s hair better. It took a while but this is my reply.

I hold the universe in my fro. And every star in it has a story.

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