March 17, 2020

excision

“It will be about four inches,” he says, and pantomimes the elliptical shape
the scalpel will make on my left forearm come Thursday. It looks like a cross-section
of Earth, or a teardrop seen from the side, or the pasta I liked as a kid, swaddled
with butter. It seems excessive, but aren’t we all being asked to cut a wider swath 
these days, make some extravagant sacrifice in service of the whole? Afternoons,
I walk with my arms swinging by my side, like seaweed. I imagine myself suspended,
weightless, drifting to the rhythms of an unseen current, traveling between islands.
I imagine the line of stitches below the surface of my skin. They will dissolve, he says,
and I picture that moment weeks from now when the scar will settle and I will look down,
humbled by the lengths my body has gone to talk to me, to heal me, to forgive me.