Fontanelle Closes Over Time

The fontanelle, the soft diamond at the crown of an infant's skull, pulses before it hardens. Bone has not yet decided where to meet bone. For months the skin trembles over the brain's own weather, a window before the house is sealed. Then, quietly, the plates converge; the gap seams shut, and no scar marks the spot where the skull was once negotiable. The adult head remembers nothing of this argument settled without ceremony. Somewhere under the hair, the suture lines still trace the old borders, faint as a map of countries that stopped existing. What closed was not just bone. It was the possibility of another shape entirely.