Scalp Detox on Sunday Morning

Scalp Detox on Sunday Morning

by Sarah Lachmansingh

(Content Warning: body horror)

worms grow from my head on sundays, on sun days, in a sun daze. i wait for robins to peck me but they have found better places to rest their beaks. instead my mother plucks them in her beauty parlour with rubber tongs. we call their heads tails and their tails heads then wash them in our plastic sink.

she dries them in flowerpots filled with fishbowl stones and chalk. they move like eels before they are eaten on deck. their bodies are pure gold. i cleave their heads/tails with the tip of my fake nail and slip the entrails into the pocket inside the pocket of my favourite jeans.

then my mother lays me down and tells me to rest. she feeds me silver tea and cinnamon sticks until she is convinced i am sleeping. on sun da(ys)(aze) she massages my scalp until my eyes lull, murmuring dish, fish, wish then she leaves with the gold worms in her palms. 

she will sell them in the market and say they mend acne scars, acne stars. young girls buy them, i think, but they might be birds. robins. one told me with its beak pressed to the windowsill. they will rub gold worms on their faces and glow or think they glow. some will eat them. they’ll read the wrong instructions. 

and then when she returns, she will drape a wet cloth under the nub of my scalp. she will wait for new worms to sprout. her pockets damp with coins. she will wait for the next medusa to burst through my scalp. pus in a popped zit. she will fertilize my follicles with a mixture of soil and well water. she will wait.