My+Father+Thought+It...

From **//The Book of Matches//** (1993), Simon Armitage My father thought it bloody queer, the day I rolled home with a ring of silver in my ear half hidden by a mop of hair. "You’ve lost your head. If that’s how easily you’re led you should’ve had it through your nose instead." And even then I hadn’t had the nerve to numb the lobe with ice, then drive a needle through the skin, then wear a safety-pin. It took a jeweller’s gun to pierce the flesh, and then a friend to thread the sleeper in, and where it slept the hole became a sore, became a wound, and wept. At twenty-nine, it comes as no surprise to hear my own voice breaking like a tear, released like water, cried from way back in the spiral of the ear. //If I were you, I’d take it out and leave it out next year.//