Ode to Armpit Hair

Every June I think I might stop shaving

my armpits. Every summer’s

half-assed attempt involves parties

with my arms clamped shut

like when I was in middle school, afraid

my deodorant wasn’t working, or suddenly

shaving if an event called for me

to lift my arms above my head. I don’t feel free

like I feel I should, even in T-shirts,

my weak conviction guards me. But in the privacy

of my own home, I stroke my hair

like a hipster who wants wisdom

from his beard. I can’t stop admiring

myself to my husband, who isn’t

as amazed as I am about follicles containing

2 or 3 strands, or the different lengths

of hair like actual grass. My first

female friend with armpit hair was beautiful

and, of course, white, and I lived for a few years

in a town full of organic gardening, armpit hair,

and white feminism. Most of

my creative energy then was spent

writing about my mother, but not once did I

think of her armpit hair, which I believed as a child

existed out of self-disregard, as any type

of political statement. I look at my armpits and think of

the power accorded to them because

I grew up here, am young still—as if they could,

like the stereotype, live vicariously

for my mother’s. I can’t now

see armpit hair on a white woman

without picturing expensive produce and clusters

of white women—even white women

I love—safely ensconced. In my wishful utopia,

a future daughter of mine thinks as seldom

of  white women as she does

my armpit hair.