What The Hell?

 (Some slightly less personal writing from my "corona" WIP

vegetation, they remembered from other climates could be part of the reason the Grand Canyon State lost its place as part of an allergy honeymoon. Which might have led her to use her overdone lips to say “ Been there,” but maybe it was full-on heartache she understood. For a moment, Carolyn felt a warm thread of closeness between her and the pretty young stylist. She had never felt that as a sober person before that day, only occasionally in the crowd at concerts or music festivals—those people had felt more like her people, so it was easier to lean back into it than in the hair salon, but she still wished she could hold onto it with people all the time, even as she knew that was a greedy thought.

Carolyn was reminded of that haircut(and not only because she learned she liked her hair short after all, though she highlighted it to add a little “invincible summer” to her look later by having highlights put in. It seemed hard to believe she’d once gotten the same effect by running around outside enjoying herself, but she had.) on that endless morning after the shock of seeing the Resident elected. As she walked in, turning an unmasked face toward the salon, as a song from her early working days played on the radio in the crowded salon that seemed to be full of depleted-looking women with sleepless shadows under burning eyes. Now, when she thought of that memory, crushing as it still was, in retrospect feels freer than it should, since we hadn’t heard about social distancing yet. That  could make something that she used to do all the time simultaneously more beautiful and more disgusting, a moment like seeing a rainbow in a muddy puddle.