Glitter Nail Polish

Trashy or Trendy?

Bianca Llerena

Glitter nail polish can lie between two things:

a box of plastic jewels and chandelier earrings.

Either a bear skin coat or printed lipstick underwear.

And this says a lot.

But either way, we move our hands when we write, and, abstractly, paint silver constellations.

Then we ask, what color cochineals should we use to paint our lips? What insect scales will we face the world with today? Another question, but this time the shade we see is pink.

Yesterday, we smelled like fresh daisies. But today, we might smell like tobacco or vanilla sex. It all depends on whether we wake up early enough to choose. Sometimes I smell like toothpaste and an unwashed pair of jeans. Other days, I smell like cherries and old coffee creamer.

I sit in class and dream of big steak dinners with crab meat and oysters and spinach dip and toasted bread and

thick

damp

chocolate cake.

The coffee in my gut rots a little while this happens

and the orange sitting in my backpack does too.

In class, I don’t wear all that much, but if you saw my closet, you wouldn’t believe me.

Sweaters knotted with tank tops, jeans stacked atop of skirts, scarves bursting out of drawers.

Wouldn’t glitter match the most anyway?

I have too much free time, I think.

Too much time to think about what matches and what doesn’t.

Are zebra stripes in or out? Would they clash with my cheetah print stockings?

It might not seem like it matters all that much

(kaleidoscopic gems on my nails couldn’t possibly mean a lot)

but I like it, because it was a choice I got to make.

And I made that same choice when my

mom finally let me paint my nails for the first time,

and my sister let me dig through her drawer

to choose.