Growing Pains

When she was six years old,
she took a pair of her mother's scissors
and chopped off her brown locks
in an act of childhood defiance.
"It's only hair"
                      they said,
"it will grow back."
It took a year,
                         but it did.

When she was fourteen years old,
she took out her anger on her body
and used the sharpest objects she could find
to trace her self-loathing in her flesh.
"It's only skin"
                       they said,
"it will grow back."
And it wasn't perfect,
                                        but it did.

When she was twenty-one years old,
she took a course on ethics
and asked if the forest were cut down
in displays of power, not production.
"They're only trees"
                     they said,
"they will grow back."
But there wasn't time,
                                         so they didn't.