Founded in the fall of 1991, Laurel Moon is Brandeis' oldest, national literary publication. Each issue we publish features original work from undergraduate students.
Whose name I have not forgotten,
despite all the nice to meet you’s and what was your name again’s and here, put your number into my phone’s of late August,
the exponential rate of beginnings
— I have not forgotten the endings, some trailing, some jagged and piercing
you more than others with the realization that none of this is
inexhaustible: recaps of the day in midnight exhaustion
of people you think you could love, but everything (everyone) in moderation
I have not forgotten how on this side of life, nothing seems to come full circle
except for you.
On Yom Kippur (9/16) they give us index cards to write the names of those lost, to be read aloud the next afternoon. I turn your name into memory into ink, then go to every service except for the last one, except for yours, I am tired of Judaism for the week, I say, but I am not tired of you (I do not say).
On Rosh Hashanah (9/7) they end with the mourner’s kaddish that shoves me back into the chamber of your absence, I am learning the anatomy of the back of my throat, and I am trying to keep up with words too fast whose meaning I am oblivious to, I am angry at this oblivion, at jew-ish-ness and the godlessness that never lets me say “rest in peace” and believe it.
In August, two days after move-in day, I see ghosts for the first time.
In August, two weeks before move-in day, you leave for the last time, and you leave only her behind
grief–
whose name is etched into late-summer-early-fall, whose finale I hope will be this last rainy day of September, in some what-is-this-a-metaphor-for-middle-school-English-class-short-answer-question kind of way, I am praying for cliches if only they are there to help me, like the downpour outside my window is your god’s tears, and how bad things come in threes and this is the third day in a row I’ve cried since August. And despite what people call her, there is no “good” that precedes her name,
no, only a monosyllabic creature
who was a woman, place in the kitchen, in the distraction of the olfactory
who was a man, place in the deep folds of nighttime and midnight howls
if-you-cry-to-the-world-but-no-one-hears-it-did-you-really-cry-to-the-world
who I have tried to force into a whisper, who in return has broken
all agreed upon boundaries,
broken out at 11 AM,
in classrooms,
in broad daylight and
places with high danger of witnesses,
who I have shushed and sequestered and tried to turn
into a whisper, until there is nothing left to do but wonder
when her retaliation is complete.
In October, I find mirrors among the living
and with our August ghosts, she reminds me
that I am not the only one
still learning how to forget.
And at last: I am no longer sorry that I dared utter your name.