I dyed my hair black last night.
This morning the sun came in like an accusation.
Yesterday I was blue and green,
all bruise and algae,
looking older than I am,
wiser than I wanted to be,
lost in the particular way
only the nearly-grown can be.
But this morning
I looked in the mirror
and she was gone.
Three months of blue,
three months of green,
three months of becoming someone
I could not recognise
were washed out by black.
My face looked younger.
Not beautiful.
Not happier.
Just younger.
Four years younger, almost.
I have not been fourteen in five years,
but there she was,
wearing my face again,
with the same foolish eyes,
the same mouth that had not yet learned
how often a promise can rot.
How strange
to look less lost
and feel more lost for it.
Yesterday I looked like someone
who had survived something.
Today I look like someone
who still believes she won't.
And isn't that the cruelest part?
At fourteen,
I had already decided my destiny.
I had named the roads,
picked the doors,
counted the years ahead of me
as though the future were a house
I could simply walk into.
I thought faith
was another word for knowing.
I did not know
faith could betray you.
I did not know
the girl who planned her life at fourteen
would grow up only to watch it
quietly become someone else's.
So here I am,
black-haired again,
four years older
and somehow four years younger,
standing in the morning light
looking like the girl I was
before the world taught me
that destiny is a liar
with a beautiful voice.
And God,
how young she looks.
How terrible
that she still looks like me.
Nubisha Rabya Topote, an XI-grade student at Holy Cross College, is a poet and writer