typetriggers, aug 22 - aug 29.

while i was out:

When I ran out for dog food, per-her-request, she changed her hair, meaning to surprise me with the expensive red dye she'd found on sale at the corner salon, the day she had shaggy layers cut into her bangs. The goal was to wait for me to walk in and shout, "It's a whole new me for you!"
It took me longer than we expected.
So she re-did her makeup, heavier on the eyes, pulling back blacks from the blue-green pupil she turned brown with a colored lens she'd bought for Halloween two years ago, when she wanted to dress up as Jane Austin, and was obsessed with being 100 percent accurate, as though there were wandering Victorian-Figure-Costume judges giving out prizes downtown (when I made this joke, her eyes filled with tears).
She put on clothing she gathered from our neighbors, band t-shirts from the A&R girls that lived upstairs, had them give her a french manicure, wiping neon pink from her fingers and toes. She borrowed a razor blade and made her smile wider, bleached her teeth. Quit smoking, then started again, but this time menthols.
She changed her room and lowered her ears and threw out all her books and filled her shelves with new ones by authors I'd never heard of, even the ones her Dad gave her, just before he died and I had to drive her to the airport and hug her in smoky terminal bar. She reordered her Netflix queue and took up Cajun cooking and learned to laugh at all new kinds of jokes (the kinds I've never known how to tell).
When I got home, I was still me.
She was a whole new her for someone else.

false nostalgia:

the night air is warmer than it should be so i roll down the windows and as i drive by your apartment that old song clicks on the radio, and suddenly it’s years ago and she’s all i see, laughing, throwing her arms around my neck, kissing my cheek, and she whispers, and i say it’s not my fault, i loved her before i knew her, and upstairs in your bed she whispers, dreaming, and she rolls over and you wrap your arms around her but she does not say your name.