By Proxy

I don’t know how you’re doing this.

—the well-meaning people who don’t know what to say

There is no not doing this.

My child is that child. Another bald child.

No eyelashes. No eyebrows.

We all know what that means.

You know. I know.

It means the worst thing

a parent can imagine.

Look at the pictures online:

One kid trails an IV.

Another sits in a bed

visiting with a football player.

A close-up: a small hand

crowned with a hospital bracelet

holds an adult’s hand.

I would have volunteered, held

the pain in my body,

like I held her in my body

before she was born.

Pain might have squirmed

and turned, like she did

at eight months, making me

scared she’d be breech.

I have room for more scars. Please.

A diagonal slash

across my abdomen, a numb

triangle beneath the white line.

I have space. Give me

a port scar, a bubble

under my collarbone.

The lung biopsy scar,

a chip beneath

my shoulder blade.

If the only way out is through,

then pull me all the way through,

like a needle.

Let what little

I am allowed to offer

be a thread,

stitching this cut

through our lives

back together.

And you, dear one. You only say you

don’t know how I am doing this

because you believe your relief

over not being me will protect you

from being me someday.

And me, I have imagined worse things.

I can’t stop imagining worse things.

That’s how I’m doing this.