Glasgow Coma Scale

for Dominic O’Hooley

First on scene, emergency services
score you six and leave without me.
I tail the silence of blue lights,
abandon the car in the ambulance bay.
Trauma team score your four:
pupils not yet fixed. Aggressively cared for
to limit risk of cardiac arrest—
your young organs ready to harvest.

I want to seal my mouth to your dented skull,
suck shape into cranial plates,
ask about the day we lay naked under leaves
tasting the age of rain. Placed bets on when
the lone apple would fall from the winter-bound tree.
You already knew and kept it from me.