I used to think my tangles were a sign of curls to come, the thing differentiating my head from all the other girls in class. A promised womanhood of non-conforming beauty. Poppy sits at the kitchen counter at her aunt’s house, their black metal Facebook Marketplace bar stools always make me nervous. What if she falls and I’m not there to catch her? That’s the fear, right? Some preventable tragedy striking. But she’s hit her head twice, landed herself in the pediatric emergency room twice now. While I wasn’t looking. She’s tough. As rough and tumble as the straw-colored tumbleweed of tangles gracing the back of her head. I’m staring at them now, watching her eat pizza. Studying the differences between her and her cousin beside her. They have the same nose. Similar eye color. Same need to be heard. Right. Now. But, she has my hair. I’ve known that for a while. Ever since we started needing to brush it every morning. And she complained. Suddenly, the little girl who didn’t cry getting stitches on her chin is tender headed. Eventually, my mom gave up. Let me wear pants to church and walk around with half-wilted waves on my shoulders. It just wasn’t worth the fight. My tender headed hard head became one of our sorest subjects. The unkempt exterior a constant reminder of the mess in between us. Throughout the years, I measured my worth in it. And the worthiness of my relationships. If you can’t handle me at my Hermione in Chamber of Secrets, you don’t deserve me at my Hermione in Goblet of Fire. You either loved me for the mess on and in my head. Or, like mom, you left me to navigate the mess on my own. The hair became a thing of its own—a way for my fans and detractors to denote me in a lineup. So much that every time I looked in the mirror, I would see myself exactly as they did, depending on which side of the bed I’d woken up on. Arrested by the puffy rat’s nest or freed by my own golden mane. A halo of unruliness; my biggest most visible reminder of my inner child. Maybe she was so hard headed because her hair was the thing keeping her soft—to the voice inside her, whispering: You don’t owe them an untangled mess. You don’t owe them anything. She has my hair. It may be the only thing of mine she has. But I’ll never stop fighting for her to keep it.