Blonde

remember when I dyed my hair a lighter shade, just enough to forget its own colour

I wanted it to look honey coated and kissed by the sun

I showed up at your doorstep,

my smile met by a kind of surprise in your eyes

the kind that said you didn’t like surprises

“you don’t like it?”

I asked,

my cool disposition like a tarp over my desperate eagerness for you to approve

if only I could impress you

because I was never good at sports

I couldn’t even hold my own in a game of ping pong

we played in the office space above a bustling cafe

at the top of the spiral staircase

with one wall boldly protesting a different colour than the other three

which you later told me was a perfect representation of me

you didn’t say it like a compliment

I picture this office space, where you fixed things that were broken

that time your boss came in and followed our footsteps

to the perfect crime

we drove away and swore to never look back

but the road ahead was short

and eventually you did turn back, you had to, you said

the cars were coming up fast and there was no stopping the inevitable

“it’s not my favorite,” you told me

I thought that meant maybe you liked me for me, in my natural and original form

but that couldn’t be further from the truth

you were trying to bend and shape and mold me into the kind of girl you could like

you had a specific vision in your head

long dark hair, tan skin, and glistening blue eyes like the depth of the ocean you would’ve swam for her

and there I was,

my golden hair a stark reminder

that I would never be that

I didn’t understand until I started dying my hair

a different colour every year

that you could never love

someone you didn’t recognize

you wanted all the walls to be the same colour

you wanted to see me in black and white only

so that the space between us was always in the grey

But I bled crimson and I poured blue

I emptied the bottle of brown and I sang an off-white tune

until I breathed fresh green for the very first time

And now I live like the walls of the office you hated for being so inconsistent

and I laugh as yellow as the colour I dyed my hair