Poetry
Strands
Arielle Arbushites
issue five
He climbs into the chair
like a question mark,
small feet swinging, cape fastened,
superhero in training.
The clippers hum like bees around his ears,
gathering the fuzz of childhood.
The barber asks the sacred sequence:
What grade? What’s next?
and he answers with the bright certainty
of someone who still measures time
in video games and recesses.
Each word lands, soft practice
for the cadence of adulthood.
Hair falls in commas across his bony shoulders,
quiet grammar of growing up,
each snip a small correction,
stay still,
a sentence revised in real time.
I watch from the waiting seat,
my hands folded around the weight of time,
how easily it falls away, strand by strand.
About the Author
Arielle Arbushites is many things, but above all she is a licensed social worker who has been a writer all her life. She has mainly published poetry on social platforms and lit mags or journals, including upcoming work in Neologism and The Orchards Poetry Journal. Arielle lives and writes in Lehigh Valley, PA where she balances motherhood, hospice work, and poetry as a means of understanding what it means to be alive and connected.
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