After Signing Parental Consent

Today, I agreed to let them make a hole

in my infant son’s skull.

And now I am wondering about the

tiny white shards of bone that will be

carved away by the surgeon’s cranial drill.

What happens to them?

What happens to us?

Do they disintegrate into nothingness

or will they lie forever on the concrete floor

of the perpetually-washed operating room?

Will they slide down sterilized drains?

Or maybe—perhaps—you will hold them.

Can you hold them?

All these loose shards of skull and

all these tiny broken bodies and

all these tears that were never cried

despite or because of our fragile mortal flesh,

our weak, incisible flesh?

Maybe you will take these fragmented horrors

up into yourself and in time give them back to us,

in your eternal time give us back to ourselves,

transfigured and made whole.

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A poem published by Everyday Epiklesis.