Open Your Eyes
I hear the crunch of each shiny foil being pressed by the stylist’s long, blue fingernails into my head and when I crack my eyelids, I am back at the house getting ready again, re-reading Adrianna’s text message.
Meet us at Panic. Sat 12.
I see Don’s dry cleaning hanging in the hall, his dark sport coats, white dress shirts, and pants. I think of pressed uniforms.
I peek in the mirror at the stylist’s fingers. They look like toy soldiers - all those fast moving nails march on my dumb deck of a head. Maybe one of them will save me from this fate and the commander will bark, “Put her blonde instead.”
I discover that sitting here being scared takes more than I ever expect, and when the stylist asks me if I’d like anything to drink I say, “No thanks, but have you got any donuts covered in crystal meth?”
Bev, Gitt, and Adrianna don’t laugh at what I’ve said. They seem too quiet in their chairs.
They know about all of it.
And what they know about the woods and Soccer Boy, the wig and the cancer lie echoes across the salon and bounces off the crinkling foils. It rustles each coloring cape, even worse than mean words ever could, and then it comes to land on my stylist’s quick moving fingers as she brushes more goop on my hair. And it is as if she senses the strange calm in the room too and her fingers fly. This whole coloring process becomes the loudest and most penetrating sound in the world.
Meet us at Panic. Sat 12.
I see Don’s dry cleaning hanging in the hall, his dark sport coats, white dress shirts, and pants. I think of pressed uniforms.
I peek in the mirror at the stylist’s fingers. They look like toy soldiers - all those fast moving nails march on my dumb deck of a head. Maybe one of them will save me from this fate and the commander will bark, “Put her blonde instead.”
I discover that sitting here being scared takes more than I ever expect, and when the stylist asks me if I’d like anything to drink I say, “No thanks, but have you got any donuts covered in crystal meth?”
Bev, Gitt, and Adrianna don’t laugh at what I’ve said. They seem too quiet in their chairs.
They know about all of it.
And what they know about the woods and Soccer Boy, the wig and the cancer lie echoes across the salon and bounces off the crinkling foils. It rustles each coloring cape, even worse than mean words ever could, and then it comes to land on my stylist’s quick moving fingers as she brushes more goop on my hair. And it is as if she senses the strange calm in the room too and her fingers fly. This whole coloring process becomes the loudest and most penetrating sound in the world.
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