Crossing the Border into the Kingdom of the Sick*

I hold the small, socked foot poking out of the MRI. 
It is nothing like the spaceship he was promised.

We wait as the machine’s throb of galloping horses 
drones on and on and on.

A tumor, they say, in the middle of his brain.

I hug my arms to avoid throwing a chair through 
a waiting room window with views of a brick wall.

And just like that, my 7-year-old son and I find 
ourselves in the smoldering bunker of a new life,

picking our way through the rubble 
with our bare hands.

* “kingdom of the sick,” from Susan Sontag in Illness as Metaphor

---

“Crossing the Border into the Kingdom of the Sick” little somethings press,
motherhood anthology, Issue 7, 2026

---