Poetry, a never-ending pandemic, and hair dying

 The end is quickly approaching, as March switched from a month of disdain to one of promise. Whether the end to you, the reader, is the end of the pandemic (vaccine distribution!!) or the end of our high school career (we get to leave troy!), it’s getting closer and closer with each day. The pandemic has changed our lives in the past year, and for some, it was a year of transformation for the better, but to others, me and my extroverted personality in particular, it was a year of immense loneliness and internal struggle. So as a year has slowly passed, here’s a poem to commemorate the most drastic change (note the sarcasm) that I’ve experienced: my changing hair colors.

The purple dye was the first, but 

It didn’t really

Stick

It washed away, 

With the mess of events arranged perfectly

On my dry erase calender 

Which soon

Mimicked

The blank shelves of grocery store shelves,

The ghost town of empty streets, 

And loneliness

Which soon 

Became every day as one week

Became only until summer

Became after football season

Became just ‘til Christmas

Became no senior year.

The blue turned to green

Not what I intended, but when 

Everything is 

Falling 

Apart, 

you take what

You can get. 

Filling every moment with 

Hobbies hidden away

From my childhood, we were 

Told to make the most of the time. 

You’re finally getting the break you wanted, 

They said. 

But when the lights shut off 

But when you wake up to the same house

But when walking is the only escape

But when your pajamas become daily attire, 

You realize that

This is not what you wanted. 

The pink glowed like the sun, finally 

Some change. Long days of 

Playing volleyball 

Picnics in the park

Parking garage sunsets

Painting under the shade 

Began to 

Separate the days

But paranoia continued

To persist because 

The pandemic 

Perservered through it all. 

The summer heat burned skin

But not the virus 

Which was revealed

As inflammable.

(Note: my hair colors have continued far past the pink of summer, but I wasn’t really sure how to end the poem.)