Past Remembering - competition poem.

Past Remembering

All I know about your time in italy is this -
your teeth were not lost there, that came after,
or so I was told when I was six waiting to swim
- but your leg was left there somewhere -
and you hopped into the tidal pool.

but we were never to ask you about it
because you wouldn’t talk about italy
or the war or your friends left there
or about why you fitted two school years into one
to be able to fight for the home of your father
the home you’d never seen

we weren’t to ask you about what had been
what made you walk for hours on crutches
to remember what walking was like before you left
we were told to hush now
because it was past remembering
no one needed to be reminded of the things they did
in the name of a country you’d never visited.