What She Did With the Bangs

She said you look so different

and I said thanks and meant it

the wrong way, the way you mean

things when you're cold

and holding a credit card

in January at a pump

and can't remember what you came for.

She did the blink. The small

recalculation. Oh—

and then the name arrived

across her face like mail

for the wrong address, delivered

anyway, shoved through.

The bangs. I should explain the bangs.

The year I was fifteen

I asked for something

she called face-framing

and received instead a shelf

across my forehead, horizontal

as a sentence ending wrong—

she'd swept the clump already.

Black cape, dark pile, corner.

She was asking about my plans.

I looked at myself for weeks

and waited for the face

to come back, or for the new one

to feel less like a case

of mistaken identity.

It didn't, quite. It doesn't.

So she said you look so different

and I drove the long way home

and sat in the driveway

for a while,

and I think I knew

she meant it as a gift,

which almost made it worse.