Concussion (Snowflake) [incomplete]

When I was about ten years old, I had a sledding accident,
I hit a tree at the bottom of a steep hill,
I was going too fast.
I think it was at a golf-course, which when frozen over made a popular sledding location.
There was a bump at the end of the slope and I lost control in the last crucial moments before the hill evened out.

I think it was February vacation.
Funny thing- I didn't even want to go sledding that day.
My best-friend who had moved away a few years earlier was supposed to come over to my house for one of the then semi-annual visits that our mothers arranged.
But the plan was changed.
Instead of coming to the house, my friend wanted to go out sledding and had started making plans with another friend of his to do so.
I was invited to come along as a substitute activity for the play-date that was planned.
I really just wanted to stay in and relax that day as was expected before the change in plans, but felt obligated to go.

When I hit the tree, it didn't hurt.
I didn't black-out, not exactly.
I just didn't feel anything but subdued blunt impact,
Nothing more than enough physical sensation to register that anything had happened at all.
The adrenaline-fueled shock blocked out any pain.

I shattered the front of my scull and fractured both orbital sockets.
My brain sloshed to the front of my head and made contact with the broken bone.
When I got back from the hospital, I had to sleep sitting up for about a month or so because there was a razor-sharp splinter of bone that had dislodged from behind my forehead and rested perilously on surface of my brain.
The doctors didn't want it to slip down in my sleep and puncture the soft tissue of my frontal lobe.
For the first few weeks, my face was a layered painting of multicolored bruising,
Blue, yellow, and purple brushstrokes of broken blood-vessels edged in red and green covered the canvas of my skin.
Beneath my eyes was black.

That was nearly a decade ago,
Just about nine years in a week or so.
They said there was no permanent brain-damage.
Sometimes I wonder.
After all this time, I can still look in the mirror and see a little boy trapped in a lanky, six-foot-two frame.
Those heavy brows will always conceal the soft-edged eyes which define me,
The angular and aging face, the soft-shelled soul that confines me.