I am nine.
We are bored
and Karen is dying.
 
We drove to Austin
that summer
so Sarah’s dad—
 
who described Karen as
the great and impossible love
of his life, who taught us
 
the word lymphoma and then,
the concept of the prefix,
how it explains where the tumor lives—
 
could say goodbye.
 
The house is a rind
spooned out by the onset of death,
what’s left is a medicine cabinet
 
full of razors & we are hungry
& alone & sitting
on the living room floor
 
where the light
from a naked window
slices the hardwood
 
like melon, brandishes
each, individual fuzz
on my scabbed calf
 
a field of erect, yellow poppies
& we have been alive as girls
long enough to know
 
to scowl at this reveal
& what better time
than now to practice removal.
 
Once, I watched my mother
skin a potato in six
perfect strokes
 
I remember this
as Sarah teaches me
to prop up my leg
on the side of the tub
 
and runs the blade
along my thigh, See?
she says, Isn’t that so much better?
 
Before we left Albuquerque
her father warned us,
She will have no hair
 
a trait
we have just
begun to admire
 
except, of course
for the hair he is talking about
that which we hold against our necks,
 
that which will get us
husbands or compliments
or scouted in a mall,
 
eventually cut off
by our envious sisters
while we sleep.
 
 
 
first appeared in the chapbook New American Best Friend (Button Press, 2017)