[Verse 1]
Eighteen fourteen, Colles names the break,
Distal radius bends, a fork tine in the wrist's wake,
Smith flips it forward, eighteen forty-seven's call,
Garden spade deformity, the fragment tips to fall,
Barton grabs the joint line when the rim cracks clean away,
Eighteen eighty-two, Bennett splits the thumb's own base,
Punch a wall unwisely, boxer's fracture takes its place,
Fifth knuckle's neck gives way beneath the swing you threw.
[Chorus]
Colles, Smith and Barton, bending at the wrist,
Bennett guards the thumb joint, boxer swings his fist,
Jefferson up top, hangman down below,
Chance cuts clean across you when the lap belt holds you so,
Pott out at the ankle, Jones along the foot,
March fracture creeps in slowly, no crash, no fall, just soot
of footsteps piling mile on mile upon one weary bone.
[Verse 2]
Nineteen twenty, Jefferson names the ring that cracks,
C1's bony circle burst from a dive that snaps the stacks,
Wood Jones in nineteen thirteen read the hangman's rope and chin,
The knot pressed up beneath it, C2 snaps thin within,
Nineteen forty-eight, Chance draws a sideways slice,
A lap belt locks your hips but flings your spine out twice,
Seatbelt fracture, horizontal, splitting through the core,
Buckle low, not shoulder-high, or the spine will keep the score.
[Chorus]
Colles, Smith and Barton, bending at the wrist,
Bennett guards the thumb joint, boxer swings his fist,
Jefferson up top, hangman down below,
Chance cuts clean across you when the lap belt holds you so,
Pott out at the ankle, Jones along the foot,
March fracture creeps in slowly from a soldier's endless boot.
[Verse 3]
Seventeen sixty-five, Sir Percivall breaks his own shin,
Pott names the ankle fracture from the pain beneath his skin,
Nineteen-two, Robert Jones marks the fifth met's outer rim,
Dancers twist, the bone gives way, a sprinter's sudden limb,
March fracture needs no accident, no tumble, no collide,
Just marching feet repeating till the shaft can't take the ride,
Stress hairlines bloom in silence where the X-ray barely tells.
[Bridge]
Salter and Harris, nineteen sixty-three,
Five growth plate breaks for every growing knee,
SALTR spells it plainly, learn it line by line:
Slipped straight through the plate, a clean and gliding sign,
Above the plate it fractures, metaphysis torn,
Lower through the epiphysis, the joint side left forlorn,
Through and through together, both sides come undone,
Ruined, crushed and compressed - the worst beneath the sun.
[Chorus]
Colles, Smith and Barton, bending at the wrist,
Bennett guards the thumb joint, boxer swings his fist,
Jefferson up top, hangman down below,
Chance cuts clean across you when the lap belt holds you so,
Pott out at the ankle, Jones along the foot,
March fracture, Salter-Harris - every name's a root
back to the very bone it broke, a map across the frame.