Rapunzel

I woke up in a sweat dreaming about the Styrofoam hat box that I filled with colorful ribbons and hand-painted barrettes and hair ties collected over the years when I was a child and my hair grew and grew. I was Rapunzel with a yellow-tiled bathroom and a hand-painted wooden vanity topped with an oval mirror. When I was twelve my mother decided to chop off my hair, and I cried in a bathtub of gray luke-warm water remembering all my drawings of girls with long hair. I was the hair stylist to all the characters I drew and all the paper dolls I made. I cried, realizing that from now on I couldn't draw girls with long hair. I felt like the only girl in 7th grade with short hair, looking like a middle-aged suburban lady.