hairlines

i jump rope with my father's hairline
when he's asleep. in the morning
there are footprints i don't recognize
in the front yard. another ad on my phone
for hair loss medicine promises
we can be men forever. i disagree.
i know gender is like a new car, always
depreciating in value. i am stubborn
& so ads always have the opposite effect. 
i lose my hair in defiance. then, i spend
the next five years harvesting flax 
to get it back. in high school i discovered wigs.
cheap ones from amazon. blue
& lopsided. i brushed them in the bathroom light.
my father tried them on when i wasn't
looking. i am convinced everyone i love 
is trans (secretly or not). i think it would
be more fun that way. what if part of 
being alive was expecting impossible change?
would that make change easier? my father
has my favorite hair of anyone 
in my family. long. black. the hairline, a low tide.
i remember drawing him in elementary school
& my teacher pointing & saying,
"no one has black hair." what a strange 
thing to believe in a world of radiant 
dark-haired people. my hair is not his. instead,
it was grown from a packet of dollar store seeds.
i brush it. i talk to it. in the rain, it frizzes.
in the cold it paces like a fox. i am going to keep it
for as long as it'll have me. someday i will be
my father & he will be me. i pull put on 
the cheap wigs again only this time,
i'll shave down to the scalp. the hair, underground
in ant colonies waiting to return.