Shaving My Head
I rake the ridges of my skull.
Sickles rasping across my scalp
carve corridors through a snowscape
of shaving cream. When my radiologist
said the Beam could turn my hair
a different color, I didn’t ask which
or even if it would grow back
in patches like a dog with mange.
Dad’s hair darkened into his thirties,
Holy Ghosting with age.
I would have taken firetruck red
or gone platinum blond, if it
had meant a few more months,
or one good poem.
Cameron Morse lives with his wife Lili and son Theodore in Blue Springs, Missouri. He was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2014. With a 14.6 month life expectancy, he entered the Creative Writing program at the University of Missouri—Kansas City and, in 2018, graduated with an M.F.A. His poems have been published in over 100 different magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, and South Dakota Review. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His second, Father Me Again, is available from Spartan Press.