Founded in the fall of 1991, Laurel Moon is Brandeis' oldest, national literary publication. Each issue we publish features original work from undergraduate students.
I breathed wearing that yellow cami—breathed tarred pavement under a dark sky,
chalk clouds melting in the rain, car headlights turning corners like horizontal sunrises;
I breathed bonfires under an old oak tree, watercolor sunsets, Hershey bars, ashes,
outdated wall calendars, fell asleep to whispered lies and confessions on a dusty couch,
in the flickering light of the TV—woke up to a high, real sun and burnt pancakes,
sneezed as an orange cat padded across my lap, pawing at string it would never catch.
my older sisters flew away, one by one, in beat-up cars with the windows down,
loud and smoky and shouting, left behind piles of laundry and excuses,
missed phone calls and lost earrings—I saw ghosts when I closed my eyes to sleep,
ran barefoot in the cool, dry grass of sprawling lawns behind the main road—
walked with my best friends on dead sand, hung on rusted silver-wire fences
for what seemed like hours and seconds all at once, kicked at beaten-down grass,
leaped and treaded toe-to-toe on bleachers like they were balance beams,
or like there was a river on the other side—one misstep and we could fall in and drown.
the metal benches were dirty and loud. boys always came from the edges of the dead field
to watch us hang on the beat-up fences and memorize the dents in the bleachers.
I watched centipedes crawl through cracks between narrow beige lockers, slammed shut,
that matched the tiled floor and rectangular fluorescent lights in nowhere hallways—
I wrote the same song lyrics a million times on the inside cover of my spiral notebook.
in the beginning it looked pretty: a field of wildflowers, words looping and twisting,
shining blue and green and lilac before it turned to mud. I breathed faces,
wide-eyed and dazed, let them kiss me, gave them something to look forward to.
I gave away smiles like cheap candy; I was careless for the last time.
Jenna Lynn Good is a senior at the University of Michigan, where she studies English and has won two Hopwood awards for her poetry. Her work has appeared in the New Croton Review and is forthcoming in Polaris.