Christina Grimmie stood next to me in a Waffle House restroom as I ambled behind a woman leaving a stall into the vacant space when the volume of her hair caught my attention & I thought back to the YouTube video of her bent over a porcelain tub washing her hair to show everyone how she got so much volume at the top of her hair and made it so straight at the bottom & I clung to that thought as I settled into a squat over the toilet with my cheap Shein skirt hiked up my back & I thought about how I could hear her moving next to me and I told myself I wasn’t trying to match her pace yet I still found myself swinging my stall door open at the exact time she did and walking to the sink adjacent to her & I thought about a TikTok video I had once seen that talked about being anonymous and a normal person to celebrities made you more memorable and likeable & for some reason that stuck in my mind despite the person reciting the information not having the slightest nuance of fame I found myself complimenting her hair rather than the cover of Radioactive I listened to religiously & speaking about how her eyeshadow made the her eyes pop rather than how her over of Bound To You, had 11-year old me empathizing with heartbreak I still had yet to truly experience & in the back of my mind when I walked back to my table while we chatted lowly amongst each other before parting ways with a polite smile I wondered if this exchange would have been more profound than telling her I forced my mom to watch an hour's worth of her videos and call The Voice with me when she joined the show as a contestant to place votes & when I told my friends who I'd met and none of them recognized the name it did nothing to cease the excitement and stolen glances toward her table & as we got up to leave and Kenzie told me to go get her autograph lest I live with the regret forever & I instead linked her arm with mine and turned for the door as we made for our car buzzing over the newest Altered Carbon episode.
