I could have avoided it:
The burning, the numbing, the cutting,
The gel so strong it could peel paint off the walls,
Much less skin.
I’m not even hungry,
Even though it was just a tiny piece they sliced off;
Got it all on the first pass.
I left a part of me behind
And there’s no way to fill it up
Except with memories.
My mother’s guilt trip:
“Too many sunburns at the beach and the waterpark,”
As if we were there every weekend
Instead of the annual pilgrimage,
Because there was the corn
And the dogs
And the farm
And we didn’t have a money tree to pull from,
And I said,
“You can’t live in a bubble.”
We’d have missed catching that blue crab,
Big enough to eat,
No pot in the state park room large enough to cook it in,
So we went to the store and bought one,
And I ate crab for the first time,
Picked white meat out of a crusty shell.
It was worth it
To grease up with SPF15
That washed off in the chlorinated pool water,
My eyes swollen from sun and chemicals
Or burning from salt and tears.
I wonder what spots haven’t appeared yet.
Were the seeds planted while I was snorkeling?
Swimming like a topwater crank bait for the sharks, leaving my sister behind?
Or was it during that thirty minute period of
Time on the deck during my senior trip?
(I won’t burn in thirty minutes, nah)
It’s the same sun as at home,
Just a different angle.
The doc placed the light directly on my forehead while she made the incision.
I squinted to see our reflection in the frosted glass of the sliding door,
But she told me to close my eyes and to pretend I was on a beach.