Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Not snow but off-white, almost bone, made of some early, heavy plastic. A big comb - as long as my arm, wrist to elbow.

I carried it in a leather purse hung from a strap on my shoulder. If I was old enough to carry a purse, I must have been thirteen or fourteen. I would stand in the girl’s bathroom at school or in the guest powder room at a friend’s house and run the big white teeth through my hair - which, at the time, my mother kept cut short enough to clean with a wash cloth, shorter than the fur on the kind of dog that has to wear a coat in winter.

I would comb my hair carefully, then - not quite on purpose - leave the comb behind on the vanity or next to the big porcelain sink. It always came back to me. Classmates, teachers, complete strangers, would run after me, calling, “Isn’t this your comb?” And why not? It was the only white comb in a world of black combs and furry, linty brushes. I admit it. I left it behind just for the pleasure of having it come back, boomeranging - thunk - into the palm of my waiting hand.

Then one day, it didn’t. I didn’t notice for awhile. I had such confidence - I had never lost anything important to me. What did I know? First the comb. Then my mother went to the hospital and came home without her breasts. Then my father left one day for work and never did come back.

I did the only thing a girl with no comb could do. I let my hair grow, tangling down my neck, shoulders, eventually past my waist. I grew the very hair my mother had always been afraid of, the kind that got her off my back for good. If the white comb had come home begging, banging on my door - it would have been for nothing. Even that comb would have broken its. teeth, weeping in such hair.

So the white comb stayed gone, unless - the thought occurs to me - it’s been here all along, a trellis lost in densest, deep wisteria. Could it be? I feel my heed gently, fingers searching between my shoulder blades - there, I feel it. Those bumps along my spine. The comb! Clearly this is the source of those sharp pains in my liver. What a relief to know! When I finally have an attack so acute I am rushed to the hospital, they will find it. The nurse will wash it in alcohol, hand it to me in a plastic bag. The white comb. Perhaps a little pink after causing so much bleeding. The white comb, my comb, in my palm again.

Worth any amount of pain, any number of stitches, to have the past again.