A Change In Appearance

… and so then I decided to dye my hair black but somehow it came out red. Stained the tops of my lobes in the process - my ears now constantly burning. I thought to myself ‘Why not put your hair up like those models and guys in the movies? A man bun?’ Mine came out more like a deflated scone, its leaking contents my hair: straggly and errant like bitter strawberries or sour milk – the difference I’d hoped for not entirely a success. I’d seen my reflection in a store’s mirror broken, cracked. My body slewed across one surface cut in two. ‘Why can’t I be more like him?’ ‘Why can’t I look like them?’ Questions pasted over my face like powdered arsenic; make up revealing my flaws rather than covering them. A change was needed. A reinvented me. And so, then, I decided to dye my hair black. But it came out red.