LOVE INSTALLS — THE HEAD TECHNIQUE

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My sophomore year of high school, my school

mandated therapist gives me a styrofoam head

to fill with kind words about myself. My father

waits in the parking lot only to stifle shrieks

at the no-eyed creature, two gauges on its head.

My scalpel sharp nails comforting a new part

of myself ​Just the beginning​ I cut out of Cosmopolitan

he couldn’t read but knew I was trying something

not to be afraid of myself, the silence banged

from my frontal bone & still today down to my

jaw, a cavity for each night my father didn’t

check if my toothbrush was wet. Now proof

he never asked me to open my mouth.

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Hajjar Baban is a Pakistan-born Afghan Kurdish poet. She spends most of her time avoiding running from herself.