where her hair used to be.
The spot is spreading like a stain
across her blond beauty.
She does not know why
she touches the spot, except
that we do, doctors do.
She does not know
she is growing again different
from other children,
she who with her Down’s
and leaky heart
already had the makings
for a mess of grief.
She does not know why
I come to sit beside her bed,
holding her hand,
an impotent barricade
between her
and a molesting god.
She touches
her ointment-smeared baldness
and smiles,
seeking my approval,
or as though reminding me
that the ones we love
are loved not despite
but for their flaws
because so much of what we are
is the result of them.
I would like to believe
many things.
I wipe the ointment
from her fingers,
and she smiles again,
her eyes looking deep
into the heaven of mine.
I find your hair
in your sister’s fist,
on the blanket,
in a weave above
the bathtub drain
like signs to somewhere
no one wants to be
or traces of a plundered
mine or clues
to an unsolvable
crime which somehow,
sometime I committed,
some sin for which you
must atone, your condition
the result of mine.
Every time you touch
your head or bring it
too near the baby’s
capricious grasp
we wince. We flirt
with loss in the most
innocent acts,
washing your hair,
tying it back.
the tangles from
your ponytail,
I grow more intimate
with the god of Moses.
Before we set out
on this path that is ours
I anoint your head
until its bald scalp flames,
I who am still the ark
of what will one day be
your memories, you
whom I know more intimately
than I know myself,
having counted
each step taken,
each nose bleed
and lifted spoon,
every hair that falls.
As we walk along,
I count each hair left
with each step taken
and tell myself
no one will love you now
for the wrong reasons.
Nearer our destination,
I imagine hands suddenly
reaching out, so small
they lose themselves in mine,
so large
mine pour into them
like darkness.