Written by Airrion Blackstock
My dad is bald by choice.
Probably by nature too at this point.
Nature: the archetypal rival of nurture.
Nurture: a correlative expression of care unto growth.
Growth: the thing they found in my dad’s prostate.
What will change when they start the chemo and his shower drain
never has the chance to choke again. When my eyes heave dry
because I can’t feel the fatigue raking my father’s body
or clasp his clammy hand from eight hours south.
For three years he watched PSA charts like a shorted stock;
for six our relationship rose and fell, failing
to climb high enough for me to need to know.
I need to find what lies
beneath the stubbled facts, to see myself
in the shine of his scalp. I am only the moon.
Moon: a bright crescent on a dark expanse (c.f. the proud smile of a black mother).
Mother: what my dad called the woman he watched die of cancer.
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Airrion Blackstock is an Atlanta-based emerging poet whose work has featured or is forthcoming in Rust & Moth, Eclectica Magazine, Inkwell (formerly Ekstasis), The Talon Review, and elsewhere. Airrion is also a proud husband and girl dad, nonprofit accountant, seminary dropout, and much more.