Founded in the fall of 1991, Laurel Moon is Brandeis' oldest, national literary publication. Each issue we publish features original work from undergraduate students.
Through the window, berry shades fill my bedroom while my father loafs in the hall. Heavy steps crescendo as he comes around the bed. His body’s watery reflection in the window, flecked by the pale blue garden lights, roosts on top of the pane. His silhouette shrinks into the dark summer sky. His nose casts a long shadow like a pillar barring my body from his. He sits on my shins and his leaden cheeks turn my legs to pulp. Let me tell you about my mother, he garbles and my eyes roll like marbles, smashing against my eggshell skull. Pinball. His blurry mouth, strung with black hairs, is an open hole waiting for my marble.
I pull the covers high around my neck and peer down at my chest; two hazy white hills glow bold in the dog night sky. The valley between them is a path to his stomach. A swollen balloon pours over his blue silk pajama pants. I blink and my marble eye shoots through the valley pam! bah! Into his belly button. The burst balloon, purple like cherries, soaks the sheets.
I bare my teeth while the remaining rattling marble bangs violently against my skull. I gaze up at the profile of my dad. His eyes, although it’s only nine thirty, are already two watering holes of hot sea, threatening to burst if he does not tell me about my mother so I: aim my left eye, a pearl polished steadily all it’s life, at his bottom lip. Flung; his pink lips split and blooming flares splatter like sparklers. His beard ignites; each wiry hair, black like burnt wicks, frays and sprawls in wild directions while he tips over like a cow. His mouth still ajar tell..... Mother..... but his speech breaks off as black marbles fill his throat. His cheeks puff the size of walnuts, then plums. Dried by flames his legs curl underneath him on my bedroom floor, useless and thrown, like my black sheepskin robe.