What is a Memory?

Layla Shaffer

Layla Shaffer is a student at Tufts University.

What is a Memory?

My finger leaves a mark across the photo’s dusty surface
the one that sits by the window,
with its corners curled up at the edges.

I trace your jagged outline,
so that I’ll remember the way your eyes seem to shimmer,
like a ripple of water cascading from a pebble’s plunge.
so I won’t forget the way
your smile resembles a half moon
its corners perpetually curled upwards.

sometimes they are so vivid, I can feel them.
those random little moments
from a warm summer day

cackling laughter and a crackling campfire
water rippling against the shore
—they recapitulate inside my brain.

smoke seems to singe my nostrils
from the campfire we gathered around
or your car on I-95
I can’t quite place.

I can picture the herringbone print of a coat
I saw on the cover of last month’s New Yorker
but when I squeeze my eyes up tight and try to remember you,
you and your perfect smile,
all I see is darkness.

Oh Memory, that elusive, undefined thing
it's forgetting and remembering and everything
that’s in between.