Athena, Holding Your Hair, Whispering In Your Ear

For me a few are enough, one is enough, none is enough. This is not for the many, but for you. We are audience enough for each other.

Earlier this week I had a surgery that involved removing a small piece of my skull. I've been recovering at home, zoning out. I was listening to music on shuffle when the Misfits song Skulls came on. It's a banger, so I was weakly singing along under my breath... "I want your skulll...I need your skulllll." That was when something awful occurred to me:

I could have had that piece of my skull if I had asked for it, but I didn't think of it, and now it's too late! It's probably gone forever instead of varnished up and chilling on my desk. I feel like our society's incentives are all backwards when the hospital staff spends half an hour walking you through forty pages of informed consent paperwork, but no one thinks to ask "Hey, did you want that piece of your skull for a rad keepsake?"

A good friend suggested that maybe the doctor is keeping it for his own private skull collection, and while the thought that my skull-piece has been added to some illicit ossuary is a comforting fiction, I'm pretty sure it's sitting uselessly at the bottom of a biohazard bag somewhere.

Farewell skull fragment, and good riddance. You were nothing but grief when you were attached, and even in departing you've managed to bring me pain.