With Every Classmate I’ve Lost, I Feel like I’ve Failed a Test

Inked tip to ruled paper,

I write your names with Sharpie;

that way, they won’t erase.

Over and over, I copy them,

as if doing so could turn

my marbled MEAD journal into the Book of Life.

 

With the classes we shared,

the problem sets we solved, the pencils

we borrowed from each other,

what’s the point of it all?

Is there a lesson to be learned?

 

Forget sine and cosine,

the equations for a falling body.

Forget SOH-CAH-TOA,

Avogadro’s constant.

 

My homework incomplete, now long overdue:

 

            to record your name, Josiah

            to hug you with words, David

to add my verse to your voice, Vix

            to reach out to you in marker, Charlie

            to gift you a metaphor, Julian

 

Let me do so again and again,

          again and again

 

until the bell rings for me

Jonathan Fletcher holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University School of the Arts. He won the Northwestern University Press’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize contest in 2023, with his collection This Is My Body: Poems. He serves as a Zoeglossia Fellow and lives in San Antonio, Texas.