Next Friday, no not this coming Friday, the one after, The Friday After Next, I will put my hair up for once. Sweep it off my temples into a conch shell spiral at the crown of my head. This is how the adults liked to see my face when I was young because I still had my unblighted baby skin and nose with no arch like a quarter pipe ramp. You don’t need hair at that age to help carry the rest of your face.
When I prepare for my future, I am taking steps to ensure I am still kissing the spots right between either nostril and corner of the mouth while I lay half-awake floating in and out of dreams in which we are talking about care. That small dip in their face is meant to be pressed to your mouth. It is evolutionarily so. It is the ripple of their smile where they store their sighs.
What I do remember is Mariott Hotels and their swimming pools where I would coast along the shallow bottom slowly, my hip bones grazing and bumping the tiles, my stomach concave like the head of a craniectomy patient. Looking down at my body and wondering what was inside. Pinching my one-piece speedo and pulling it away from my chest to let the water rush between the two layers of nylon, burping out at the neck, tickling my chin.
My old dog used to look at me like she was always missing someone. She’d lay out in the sun and wake up every now and again to check she was still where she expected. She always wanted to be on the other side of doors and would cry when people left the room.
My perfume is warped when you’re here. It smells like you, not me.
I walked by a girl on the street who was wearing my 2018 perfume and it smelled like begging.