A painting.

Thirteen years ago I was thirteen years old. My sister led me up four flights of stairs in the Fred Jones Art School at OU (stairs I would become very familiar with years later when I was in art school myself) and pulled this huge painting out of from between slats filled with canvases.


She looks like she's eleven
years old, but when she
opens her mouth she's
twenty-six. She was
only thirteen, and it was
longer than mine when
she cut it all off.

She's much braver than
me. I don't have the face for it.

I remember how much I couldn't believe it.

You're not supposed to touch oil paintings but I can't help it.

My sister even encouraged it.

I'm twenty-six now and I just cut all my hair off again.

And wouldn't you know - My sister took this photo.