The Maynard
Spring 2020

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Moon Turned Her Half Face From Me

Half the night was gone. On the tennis court only the whisper of a ball remained. I led her by the hand, which she had given me or allowed me to take. There may have been a river here once. Not likely, given the absence of rain. There had been soldiers. They had a different name for it then. The red brick building had been a private home before it became a hospital for the shell-shocked and then, later, the generally mentally unbalanced. The name was meant to inspire a feeling of peace, repose. As were the Celtic harps that inscribed the gates. To harp is to not let go. She had lost a twin sister in the forest. There was a name for that, too. She had a way of holding her mouth, an inward smile. The body has ways of forgetting. The whisperings of the men who had been in the trenches bled from the walls at night. In the hospital kitchen, they made sandwiches of circles of pink polony on white bread. Cut in half the bread formed two triangles and the polony two half-circles. They had the metallic taste of electroshock. After school, the first thing I did when I got home was open the fridge, looking for sliced meat—aufschnitt—which my mother bought from the German delicatessen. On Saturday the German man in the apron leaned over the glass counter and gave me a slice of rolled polony. After he put the poster in the window celebrating Hitler’s birthday, we didn’t go any more. When you flick a light switch off, what happens to the electricity? We arrived at the gate by means of wheels. Axle and steering. The gates were, as much as anything, symbolic, since you could leave at any point but, if you left without permission, they might not let you back in and then where would you go? Meaning is misplaced. The doctors, distinguishable by their calf-length white coats, had a way of walking that let you know they were going somewhere. Shells, whistling through the air, caused the soldiers to walk hunched over in the trenches, which had turned into rivers of mud. Some, who survived the bombs, drowned in the muck. When a twin dies or disappears her sister becomes an amputee. From the medication, her face had turned into a moon. Chiaroscuro. Two people in different places still see the same moon. With the crack of dawn, the bullets started. Unable to stretch, souls crouch. The name for this is traumatropism. There are different means to straighten someone out. Electricity is only one. Physical activity as a cure for the mind. Mens sana in corpore sano. In the afternoons, under the stelazine blue sky and the watchful eye of the OT, we ran-stumbled around the track next to the tennis court. That night, she let go of my hand, stooped to pick up an errant ball, pale yellow in the moonlight, against the green of the freshly slaughtered lawn. Half the night remained unopened.