Red Nail Polish

I was walking down the sidewalk when I saw you again. Months apart couldn't dwindle your red nail polish, dark and strong. You wore it still. 

I delicately varnished crimson paste onto your fragile nail beds, along my white desk and in my bedroom (around four years ago). And when you fiddled with your fingers in front of the mirror and the paint gleamed against the reflection blinding both our eyes, I stood behind you whispering, “Red is your color.” 

You never wanted the polish to chip: you’d come to me in need of a repaint. It became  part of both our routines. 

I stored a travel sized bottle of the scarlet varnish in the designated pocket of my light washed jeans. I’d hold your warm and dry palm upon mine and refurbish your worn hands, nice, easy and slow. 

-

Then you stopped asking me to freshen the appearance of your nails. You insisted you could fix them up yourself.

You continued to wear the red polish–let it crack and break into fragments of vermillion shards. You picked at the polish, peeled sleets of it whole, gnawed your teeth and chewed it off your fingernails. 

Until the world 

Could see this strange version of you

Living underneath the thinning blankets of ruby red. 

I texted, joked once or twice asking to repair the dulling bits

Paint over what was so unappealing to the human eye

To desperately reassemble an unfinished puzzle and put them all back together into what I could recall from before. 

“hii!!!!! 

watcha doin later this week?

 u down for some chit-chat over nail painting and bubble tea?

imy babes text me back when u get the chance :)” 

You never replied. 

-

When you waved, your newly plastered acrylics– coated in the same-old same-old– glistened in alignment with the sun. Just as they usually would. I waved back. Wearing something of the same sort of shade. 

That night I stared at the vial, full to the brim of sanguine, month-lasting nail polish, the lid still smothered in plastic packaging, standing amidst the rest of my collection.

I reached over and grabbed the nail polish remover instead. 

With a singular wipe of a rubbing-alcohol drenched tissue, the glossy scarlet that lied upon my pointer, ring, and thumb were erased. How simple was that? 

I looked into the same reflection, four years later,

At my nails,

A blank page,

A reset,

Once again.

My nails were in need of a change.

Magdalena Mercado