I come from the West, East, North and South, a combination of light and dark, the triangle finds itself complicated in my blood. Hundreds of years ago my ancestors docked against shores labeled "Paradise", where the sun always shone a bright gold and burnt my skin red. My mother would insist that I stand still while she untangled the wind and salt from my mane. She silently prayed to the new moon for thick hair four times a year. My sister and I always had the blankest of stares when we were ordered to stand in front of her while she chopped away our girlish tendrils only to reveal horror.

Looking back recalling the intense silence and concentration on her face, her thick fingers that held steadily to the sharp scissors, I often wonder what was racing across her mind on those sad Sunday Evenings. I flinched whenever she reached the corner of my ear dreading that one slip would bring blood. The scent of the sea changing my composition daily and the evening turning a piercing warm before the sun dropped from the horizon, like a heavy globular God, always reminded me of one thing.

The Missing.