active recall

Cards (26)

  • After the first phase
  • after passionate nights and intimate days
  • only then would he let me trace
  • the frozen river which ran through his face
  • only then would he let me explore
  • the blown hinge on his lower jaw
  • and handle and the hold
  • the damaged porcelain collar-bone
  • and mind and attend
  • the fractured rudder of the shoulder-blade
  • and finger and thumb
  • the parachute silk of his punctured lung
  • only then could i bind the struts
  • and climb the rungs of his broken ribs
  • and feel the hurt of his grazed heart
  • skirting along
  • only then could i picture the scan
  • the foetus of metal beneath his chest
  • where the bullet had finally come to rest
  • then i widened the search
  • tracing the scarring back to its source
  • to a sweating unexploded mine
  • buried deep in his mind
  • around which every nerve in his body had tightened and closed
  • then and only then did i come close
  • Author: Simon Armitage