Once when my father

took a childhood fall,

my grandmother pressed

to his forehead

the flat side of a butter knife,

an old world remedy

to make the swelling gone.

It left a slight depression,

a dented brow that always marked the place.

The pair of them accompany me

to hospital today:

he with crooked forehead

dead five years, his mother with

thick accent, gone another twenty.

Together we wait the hour

the surgeon will remove a suspect mass

with sharp and skillful knife,

while I wonder what scar

will mark the cutting.

And they tactfully don’t say

(I’m still young enough for vanities of mind, of body)

that scars don’t matter,

that one day I’ll become

the barest indentation,

like their presence fading

in this busy ward

or the faint impression

on the pillow when I raise my head now

to go into the surgery.

∞

From the “Online Exclusives” for the Spring 2013 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 29, No. 2)

© 2013 Cynthia Schrager