Before The Party

By Alexandra Weiss

it's a well lit bathroom
large counter
three young girls
let their parents
straighten their hair
curl it
then straighten it again 
the bat mitzvah party is tonight
a big deal
a whole hotel ballroom
my first slow dance
with arrian jahangiri
whose dad ran the pizza place 
even in my 
i-only-wear-skirts-and-dresses-
because-pants-are-for-boys phase
i don't think i'd have really understood 
why they bothered
doing all this to our hair

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Alexandra Weiss writes in Chicago, where their apartment is slowly being taken over by cacti and houseplants. They have an MA from UChicago, edit for Another Chicago Magazine and blog for the Collective for Radical Death Studies. Their work has appeared in Cathexis Northwest Press, Plants & Poetry Journal, Coffin Bell, and elsewhere.