Ismene of the bottlebrush tree, how long can an eyebrow grow untweezed? What if it’s left to curl and punk-jut garden-random, scalp, eardrum, cornea, liberated as milkweed? How will you ever learn the proper shape or coax of comb to settle these tantrum hairs? At eleven, this is gnosis: the wafers of initiates, bitter gift to put tongue to, to find browbone’s right trace, the latent surprise and sweep. Until that first tug is made, maidenhair is sand, silk, the sibillant outbreath splitting water from dryland. This brown diadem, lighter than oak leaves, what final curve or line – snarl or question -- waits disguised? Still grumpy and attractively bedridden, a roaring god beneath marble vein, still covert. I make a hobby of scanning brows for scars like yours: graphite hashmarks, swift strokes presage the capitulation to come, soon enough. For now, incorporeal, fixed by a mother’s shadow some summer after school lets out. Neither famous nor tragic, you’ll blend in well.