Most of her hair was gone already,
but I guided the electric razor across her scalp,
brown tufts falling into my fingers.
We listened to music, drank wine,
toasted to vulnerability. She made jokes
about not needing to buy shampoo.
I sang along with the songs we had chosen—
choked on the lyrics to “Life is Wonderful,”
hummed when I couldn’t sing.
There are days when wonderful
is so far from what we might have chosen,
but wonderful it was, my hands
smoothing across the new naked landscape
of her head, delighting in the feel of the fuzz,
marveling at the gift of sharing loss and fear.
There are days when we lean into each other
and cry. And such a terrible wonderful it is,
letting the tears come. Weeping them together.