The phantom fire under the scar tissue

Dear Delyara, Every time the weather turns damp and cold like this, the shrapnel scar running from my collarbone down to my ribcage turns a violent, throbbing purple. I was just a boy standing outside a bakery when the glass exploded into the street, but thirty-four years later, my body still remembers the exact temperature of that afternoon air. I can’t sit with my back to a door in a pub. I can’t hear a car backfire without my heart slamming against my ribs like a trapped crow. People say time heals everything, but they’ve never carried a pocketful of jagged metal inside their own flesh. The street has been rebuilt three times over, the brickwork is fresh and clean, but inside my chest, the glass is still falling.