What you carry has a name

Three times he had tried–picked up the pen, put it down, almost written a word. The other students sent him suspicious looks in between their own frantic scribblings. He imagined their own flowery prose, imagined pulling out a pair of secateurs, cutting their words. His own prose was uncouth, unruly, unwilling to come. He imagined his pen magnetic, pulling the thoughts from his mind, but…

How can you write your thoughts when they are made of pain so overpowering it deletes everything else, leaving behind only itself?

This grief was everything—the whole story.

His friends made him come. They told him it would help–let it out, write it down, set it free.

They thought the grief was separate from him. It was not. There was no way to untether it. Not with pen and paper. Not even with secateurs. Beside him, a woman sat. They hadn't spoken. How could he speak as if everything wasn't broken inside of him? He could smell the woman's perfume. Sandalwood and lavender, something a bit like sand.

Summer. Summer, playing in the sand, watching tiny crabs skitter. Their eyes so bright, brighter than the sun. The memory came unbidden, unwanted. His hand began to shake.

The woman beside him turned, and he tensed, gripped the secateurs in his hand, ready to cut the woman down if she tried to speak, tried to ask. But the woman did not speak. She only placed a wrinkled hand on top of him, shaking one. The hand stayed there a while, and at first, she felt angry–how dare the woman even try to make this better? This could not be made better.

Slowly, the anger faded–the longer the hand stayed, and the silence continued. Slowly, the anger became something else, something like a wave within him. Then it became a tsunami. The sob escaped before he could stop it. He could hear gasps, pens dropping. Whispers. The hand stayed. A moment later, a tissue on his desk. Then, an arm around his shoulder. And there were no words. Only touch. And presence. And then, it seemed, the whole class was around him, holding him. Nobody spoke.

He wept. And they held him. They held him until he finished weeping, and then, quietly, they went back to their desks and took up their pens. The hand of the woman beside him stayed a little longer. Until, finally, it was drawn softly away. He stared at his pen. He imagined it sharp. He picked it up. He pressed it to the page. He imagined it cutting, into the paper, into the page, into himself, making the word she couldn't say: He is dead.

Finally, someone spoke. The woman beside him whispered, "Keep writing." So, he did. The

words appeared. The flowers grew. And they were shriveled flowers. They were browned and broken, but they were something new that wasn't there before. It made nothing better. But it was better than nothing.

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