Founded in the fall of 1991, Laurel Moon is Brandeis' oldest, national literary publication. Each issue we publish features original work from undergraduate students.
you raised me gazing up at clouds by the hum of the highway
stretched out under bright blue, skin warming, a body
absorbing honeyed stories of the river and the countryside.
both living in my cloudy mind as green as your eyes
turned, only while looking at the sky in memory
shared with a child who yet knew only our self.
now i grip, fist condensing to iron, my self
every time i call to hear the sound of the highway
like water flooding my day, turning it to memory
too heavy to keep from falling out of my body,
too ugly to keep from draining the color from your eyes.
so i look out my window, and share with you the countryside
that lies, rooted, so close while i live in this country
trying to put distance between our selves,
failing as i trace onto every face your eyes,
wishing i could hear the deafening roar of a highway
washing the bile off of my brain, out of my stomach-body,
leaving me unpolluted and fearless as i remember
i once was. once. as if i had more years to memory,
as if i had been present enough to be polluted by Country,
as if i were anything other than a clean embodyment
of your own teary, terrified self.
my body needs to live beside a highway
to have the un-trappedness trickle into my eyes.
the tears have slowed to a trickle out your eyes—
or did they not cascade but in rememory?
made to gush by the roar beside them, a highway
cementing over me, leaving me contrite
and weighty with a guilt i can only give myself
to drink into my veins, and spread out to my body.
guilt rots my blood, growing green my body
until the greenery molds over my eyes.
is this young decaying growth your self
settling over me like a film, remembering
all i have never known.
what is a country
but dirt and people over which to build highways.
Rachel is a sophomore at Brandeis University studying Education, Theater, and Creative Writing. She grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work has been featured in a previous edition of Laurel Moon.