Lice

Lice


First day in an American school,
I imagined Ms. Benvenuti’s dark
Italian hair on my own head, then

wished it down to my knees.
She introduced the class to me
and they went right back to cutting

whatever they were cutting.
I thought it strange, the white lady
floating from one head to the next—

parting curtains
of hair and scratching scalps
with the tip of a ballpoint pen.

They didn’t seem to notice her
either. The lady didn’t scrape me
with her blue wand;

I didn’t mind. Ms. Benvenuti
seated me next to an Indian girl
and said she was from Trinidad too.

I said hi. Her eyelashes were so long
I thought they would fly away. Hello,
she said and went back to cutting.

She didn’t sound like home.



© Samantha Thornhill

Previously published in Crab Orchard Review