" 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 in the 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 a melon, brandishes
each, individualfuzz
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 thing, /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
we hold against our necks,

that which will get us
compliments
or scouted in a mall,

eventually cut off
by our envious sisters
while we sleep. "

― Olivia Gatwood , New American Best Friend