My Drug Dealer Cut Off My Hair

he was my barber
and my drug dealer
he cut up crystal into lines
with the same hands
he used to cut off
my locks
until they were
too short
for my dead mother
to recognize me in
my slenderized body
and a mind
burning from
the inside
and I was
no longer
her baby.

Kevin Ridgeway is the author of Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press). Recent work has appeared in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, The American Journal of Poetry, Main Street Rag and San Pedro River Review, among many others. He lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.