Sonnet for Her
Kara van de Graaf
There is a brief hour
before I cover the nakedness of my head
when I am myself alone, the angles
of my face strange and warped
in the mirror. I don't recognize
who I am without the camouflage
of a wig anymore. I touch her hair,
I am wooed by the softness of what
was grown for me by another host,
something dead still merging
me with another—the one who was
my surrogate, eating in a different room,
wrapping her newly bare skull
with a printed cloth. I dress in darkness, then
stitch another woman to my body.
In this sonnet, the speaker explores their experience of wearing a wig and the transformation it brings. The poem begins by describing a fleeting moment before the speaker covers their head with the wig, a time when they feel the most vulnerable and exposed. Without the wig, their face appears unfamiliar, distorted even, in the mirror.
The speaker reflects on how they have become accustomed to seeing themselves with the wig, and without it, they struggle to recognize their own identity. They touch the hair of the wig, drawn to its softness, and are reminded of the fact that it was grown by someone else, someone who acted as a surrogate for them. This connection to another person via the wig is intriguing, blurring the boundaries between the speaker and the surrogate.
The poem emphasizes this merging of selves, as the speaker acknowledges the role the surrogate played in creating the wig. The surrogate, represented as another woman, has undergone her own transformation, having recently lost her own hair and now covering her bare skull with a printed cloth. This image further illustrates the vulnerability shared by both women.
In the final lines, the speaker alludes to the act of getting dressed in darkness, perhaps metaphorically indicating a sense of uncertainty or loss of control. They describe stitching another woman to their body, a metaphor for attaching the wig and embodying the identity it represents. Through this act, the speaker becomes a composite of their own self and the surrogate, as they navigate the complexities of identity and appearance.