Today my hair is wild curls and the scent of lavender. Lavender, as interpreted by the makers of the $3 bottle of shampoo I picked up at the drugstore on the way home on Thursday or last Thursday or the Thursday before. For $3, I thought, grabbing the bottle off the shelf, I can smell like a grandmother. Today my hair is wild curls and the scent of grandmothers. I am blue all the way down to my skin, yet you speak to me of heat. Your face is near my shoulder and you tell me that I smell good. You tell me that I smell good and I know you are a liar.

Every day when I wake, I remember how I was raised to be a good girl in a series of Sunday mornings stretched out in a line, lined up like soldiers, like Christian soldiers. (Onward.) I was raised to marry you in a white dress on a June Saturday in a garden full of flowers and bees. (I don’t want to marry you.) I was raised in a series of Sunday mornings so I know that Jesus died for my sins, and I will die for yours. The wages of sin is death, and my hair is wild curls and the scent of lavender. I smell like a grandmother. (I know you are a liar.) I am on my way.