We were in the spaceship room, a place for kids in the pediatric ward to float away between tests and rests. A team of doctors and doctors-in-training, my parents, me—the little astronaut. I didn’t understand the big alien words the white coats read from their clipboards. It was when a man—he couldn’t have been older than 26—looked at my dad and told him I’d lose my hair two weeks after the first dose that I realized what this was. No one used the word cancer. No one looked at me, the first time my eyes were avoided like the sun.
Kelsey Goeres is a poet and journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She can be found on Twitter @kelsgore and Instagram @kelseygoeres.