Founded in the fall of 1991, Laurel Moon is Brandeis' oldest, national literary publication. Each issue we publish features original work from undergraduate students.
Joyce walks the neighborhood like it's the great red sun, traceable by a fingertip. She is accompanied by an old dog. Her dog walks in the road and is never called back. Joyce and her dog are a poster for companionship. The dog never tells Joyce to get off the sidewalk.
I imagine Joyce thinks big thoughts. I do not want to confine her to the soliloquies of aging. But when she speaks she says—yes, together we are older than a century, imagine that. I cannot.
I cannot because my smaller thoughts are stuck circling the red sun, which appears to be stuck in the sky. I ask Joyce, have you ever seen the sun like this—stuck in the sky.
In the morning newspaper, I read that the smokescreen wildfires have caused permanent damage. It is unclear, experts say, if it is reversible.
A doctor makes an appearance—in his opinion, the sun's lungs have stopped working. It is no longer capable of puffing forward every sixty minutes. The sun, he says, is stuck like a bindi, on the forehead of someone sleeping.
When Joyce answers, the old dog is tailing us, losing patches of white fur, like breadcrumbs. Joyce says don’t worry, there are many ways to tell the time.