Bluesky

Fishy, my mother calls her lymph nodes. She tells meher voice box is a box full of cancer. She says oncea doctor spilled my brother’s tumor trying to take it out.

I search “cancer images” and my screen tiles and fillswith splattered burrs leaking radiance from undertheir hems. Each has landed on the surface of a moon.

I think of the man who took the wasps’ nests downfrom our eaves. I think of the two-sided utensilwith which my mom scooped cantaloupe into marbles—

some taws, some peewees—to suspend in jello. I do notknow whether the surgeon will scoop or scrapemy mother’s windpipe clean. But then, nothing rests

on my knowing whether a tumor is more bowl or balloon,more shadow or lump. For that, there is the Canadian doctorfor whom my mom, at her second appointment,

wore a sweater knit white around a Norwegian Maple leaf.I wanted to be remembered, she explains, this womanwho can’t run an errand without someone thrilling

to see her and trying to rally their kids: It’s her, the teacherI told you about! Of course the oncologist who will takemy mom’s voice, exiling wasps, excising orb

from flesh, knows none of this. I can’t imagine anyoneforgetting you, I say, and Don’t cry, my mother says,in the voice a stranger couldn’t tell from mine.