Child Song

My fingers restlessly bobble over the ruts and bumps of his head. The smooth skin interspersed by the scars and the odd tuft of hair. He doesn't care as long as I don't distract him from the DVD.

There are the oldest scars, only faintly sensable by the tips of my fingers. A small white spider's web of scars. From the day he was born. Trying to get blood for a blood gas test I now guess. We only noticed them when he first lost his hair. Without his tumour we'd have never known.

There is the long bumpy double track of the main neurosurgery scar. Curving round and to the right. The taut skin of a new red scar. Blood visible below the skin. Each red needle mark paired by a pink needle mark. The new operation and the old. Little jolts for my fingers as they feel the bumpiness of the bone edges of the skull. Always my mind conjours up the whine of the electric saw.

Like a turning from a main road, the single scar of the second neurosurgery. Healing better than the re-opened other scar. A smoother, less bumpy road. A pink, almost white scar. Neat needle marks, like houses lining either side of a suburban road.

Feel the heat of his head through my palm. With hair, you never sense how hot the head is. How flimsy the skin. But I can't reach IT, a few centimeters under my hand. So near, yet so out of reach.

He shakes his head. The DVD over, he clambers off the sofa and lurches over the the TV to point out the next episode he wants to watch.