Fiddleheads, or When My Hair Began to Grow Back by Emily Patterson

Some of your hair is longer now

than some of mine: the nut-brown

curls at the back of your neck

mirroring the short spirals

that frame my face like

fiddleheads. Once I walked

four miles of forest

with you within me, tiny

green scrolls stretching

upward and everywhere;

not knowing, then, that they were

ferns still furled into themselves,

so new to this world—not knowing

that if left to grow, they would soon

transform to crimped triangles,

a coolness in their wake,

their presence like water

or the memory of it.

Emily Patterson is a curriculum designer, poet, and mother in Columbus, Ohio. She holds a B.A. in English from Ohio Wesleyan University, where she received the Marie Drennan Prize for Poetry. Emily's work has been published or is forthcoming in Literary Mama, Mothers Always Write, Thimble Literary Magazine, Quillkeepers Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Sunlight Press, The Magnolia Review, and elsewhere. She can be found on Instagram at @helloemilyjean.