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Shall I compare our love to my eyebrows-wild and waxed:

…and i arrive at the salon.  3:25p.m.

Third Wednesday of the month.

All kids in tow.

Resting my neck in that uncomfortable U of the sink

listening to Maxine, my ebrowist, repeat her waxing mantra-

Girl, your eyebrows grow so fast

so thick

so wild.

between clinched teeth (I dare not move my face and lose my eyelashes too)

I know right? With the inflection the young people use.

Months later, in the shower I compare our love to my eyebrows:

waxed and wild

like Layla on the cusp of two-years old, like Quincy

after too long playing Michael Jackson Experience, to Neko

clapping loud and fast and yelling Yeah, baby! when his favorite

football team runs another awesome play.

To them all: jumping up and down and screaming like their feet are on fire

when they hear your key in the door,

Daddy’s home–his eyebrows too

wild in love.

And I compare their thickness to a chocolate milkshake

from Mickey-D’s that always tears my stomach to pieces and

leaves it in knots and still I drink it anyway,

’cause it’s good.

Like his favorite meatloaf, seasoned perfectly a mile high and just as wide

with a side of mashed potatoes and gravy, black-eyed peas.

Fresh picked:  but I digress.

After waxing there are some hairs that lie

all askew against my skin and out of place

even after the hot ripping away

of the most obvious culprits, driven from their follicles

dew drops of hot wax lying in wait for a final dabbing.

Some are too stubborn to leave and get

picked away painfully with tweezers.

Those that remain take shape, clipped into near

perfect arches–grounding the face, framing the eye.

That’s our love:  wild, waxed, picked, clipped

Plucked into the shape of a union unique only to us, two.

We frame most perfectly.

When things are

smooth, there is no makeup required.

And yet

the inner corner of the left brow reveals a tiny tuft of hair,

Maxine can never get to do right.  That tiny group reaches up

in rebellion; in reverence; in sheer arrogance to the order

created by the shaping process, an homage to imperfection.

DiAnne has freelanced work for Lifeway Publications as well as published work for literary magazines such as Turnrow Literary Journal, George Mason’s So to Speak Journal of Feminist Literature, and the online book review journal, Gently Read Literature.  DiAnne has also conducted interviews with writers of note such as Randall Keenan, Joyce Maynard and James McBride.  She has worked under the apprenticeship of Maynard and has studied under the direction of Richard Bausch, Dr. Kristen Iversen, and Rebecca Skloot–author of the New York Times Bestseller, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. DiAnne also maintains an inspirational blog for women, Who’s That Lady:  For a Woman’s Inner Bling.  At present she is revising her work of creative nonfiction essays entitled Digging for the Devil. She is also drafting a work of historical fiction titled The Strap for Delia, a fictional account of the complex lives of her female ancestors during the Antebellum South.

DiAnne L. Malone

Writer, Speaker, Professor, Blogger,

DiAnne Malone is currently Assistant Professor of English at Victory University in Memphis, TN.  She resides in the same city–known for its blues, barbecue, and rich culture–and embraces the its influence on and inspiration for her written work.  To learn more about her, click on any of the pages shown.