The Slow Master of Lenin
       

He cut my hair into shapes of a Japanese fan.
I am unrecognisable to myself.
He said I am the slow master of Lenin.
He is a fast bowler who never smiles.
We are barricading ourselves within moving walls.
It was not a dance. It was life or death.
We had to move quickly. We were strangers
introducing ourselves. I was lissom with dark hair
onto my shoulders. He was a revolutionary stylist.
We talked theory as we ran from room to room.
He cut my hair as if I were a mannequin.
As if I were someone to shape. I looked haunted
by scissors. What have you done I asked him.
It was done. The mask I was given I could not remove.
We had met in a dream tantalisingly a step ahead
of those without. There were pursuits of a kind.
I am French for princess. French for teacher.
French for woman. French for betrayal.
Who was he? This chrysalis of my imagination?
Who am I? I am shorn and bereft.
He said I am the slow master of Lenin,
why not the fast I quipped.
He showed how fast. It was an act of love swift
and to his taste. My hair cut into blades like grass
awry in the wind, like treason.

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Copyright © 2018 S.J. Litherland All rights reserved
from Composition in White
Smokestack Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission