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You are pulling your hair again

and I don’t say anything as you drop each strand on the ground and I wonder are you okay do you need help is that good for you as I see patches spread across your head and I know that it’s not good for you, but it must be if you are still doing it even after everyone points it out to you, our other friends, omg that’s so disgusting, your boyfriend, maybe you should see a doctor, your mother, how can you do that to your beautiful hair, and I want to tell you stop, but it’s not my place to say anything because I know what hurting yourself means and how it feels as I dig my nails into my legs, my arms, in hidden places to shut out the you are never going to be anything from my father, you are ugly and no one will marry you from my older sister, you are a waste of space from my mother, and I sit in my own silence knowing that these external parts of ourselves are not the only things that are hurting.

Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, has work published and forthcoming in Wigleaf, The Threepenny Review, Matchbook, Bluestem, Sunlight Press, Barrelhouse, Ghost Parachute, Cutleaf Journal, and Prairie Schooner, and honored in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf Top 50. Read Hard Skin (2022) and Kahi and Lua (2022) and preorder Bitter over Sweet (2025) from Santa Fe Writers Project. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at melissallanesbrownlee.com.

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