Brooke Elliott’s poem Roots appeared here in March. Her poetry is very intimate and vivid, inviting readers into her life.
Remission
By Brooke Elliott
By Brooke Elliott
The scar is quieter now.
Its lines are smoother,
still jagged in shape
(no time can soften the sharp points),
but cleaner,
a little shrunken,
the skin a taut alabaster
in a sea of soft russet.
I like to rub my fingers over it,
surprised each time that I
still can’t feel anything,
a little spooked that ten inches
of my body are
already dead,
the nerves shot.
But really, I like them that way;
I remember the
short periods of
nerve growth around
the scar tissue,
the screaming
over-awareness of body
that brought salt
to my eyes,
inhuman howls to my lips.
The scar is quieter now.
All that’s left is the residual fear and the milky
lightning bolt on my ri
ght calf.
ght calf.
Left to its own devices,
the body heals eventually,
even wounds as deep as yours,
but I’m still amazed that
the gaping bloody canyon
that inspired my mother’s
night-sobs and my father’s
graying hair has shifted,
closed to this clean, white
zigzag, a permanent accessory.
Like a beauty mark or a signature hairstyle,
it offers me a distinctiveness,
an unintended personal grace.
The scar is quieter now.
There are no more agony-screams from
flesh struggling to rip
through stitch-barriers
to get back to where it’s
meant to be,
no more uncontainable shrieks
when foreign metal is pulled
and clipped from tortured skin,
no more 3 a.m. sobs
into pillows and bed sheets.
The scar is quieter now.
All that’s left are
the sometimes-panics
that pump the blood so hard,
the rush and beat of it
are deafening,
but even those come at
longer and longer
intervals with
slower and slower
beats, and at least
the scar is quieter now.
Brooke, what a beautiful, evocative expression of a vulnerable but confident woman. Keep writing. So many people can identify with this gem of a poem.
Wow, very powerful and vivid indeed.
So very powerful. I love the repetition of “the scar is quieter now.”
Thank you so much.