Lice by Lori Levy

LICE

It’s a rite of passage for mothers,
I tell my daughter when she calls in alarm
at what she’s spotted on her daughter’s head.
Most of us, it seems, have to learn
how to check for them, kill them, comb them out,
dead or alive, along with their stubborn nits
that stick to the hair. She’s a lice virgin:
it’s her first time raking a thin-toothed comb
through her daughter’s hair. Her daughter is 11—
the same age I was when a nurse
came into our classroom in Springfield, Vermont
to check our scalps. I thought it’s something
only poor kids get, only dirty kids. A mark of shame.
Years later, as a mother, I learn that these tiny invaders
don’t care how rich or clean or educated you are.
I become an experienced nit picker.

My granddaughter doesn’t know she has lice
when she goes to sleep at a new friend’s house
in the new town they’ve moved to.
Doesn’t know she’s bringing them with her
when she sleeps in the bed with her friend,
uses her hairbrush, her bike helmet.
As soon as she finds out, she warns her friend—
who stops texting and calling and says she’s not allowed
to invite her again for a sleepover.
As if my granddaughter has the plague.
No one wants lice, but what’s more harmful,
more contagious? A scalp full of crawling bugs—
or the verdicts, sometimes mistaken,
that clamor inside our heads?

*

Lori Levy’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod International Journal, Poet Lore, Poetry East, Paterson Literary Review, and numerous other online and print literary journals in the U.S., the U.K., and Israel. Two of her chapbooks were published in 2023: “What Do You Mean When You Say Green? and Other Poems of Color” (Kelsay Books), and “Feet in L.A., But My Womb Lives in Jerusalem, My Breath in Vermont” (Ben Yehuda Press). Levy lives with her husband in Los Angeles near her children and grandchildren.