Milo Simpson ’20
Lua “A full moon is poison to some; they shut it out at every crevice, and do not suffer a ray to cross them; it has a chemical or magical effect; it sickens them. But I am never more free and royal than when the subtle celerity of its magic combinations, whatever they are, is at work.” —Harriet Prescott Spofford, The Amber Gods and Other Stories
The moon is watching. Her gaze filters, watery and pale, through the dark, casting blotchy shadows into Randell’s bedroom as it passes between the drapes. His gangly adolescent body is stretched out on top of his sheets, spread-eagle and restless. There is an itch crawling beneath his skin, in sweaty palms and shallow breaths. The merle shadows of his bookshelf and his closet are vague through the tired veil of his lashes, seen through half-lidded eyes. He can’t sleep, so he stares at the indistinct expanse of his bedroom wall instead. It’s painted cornflower blue, and a poster for some police procedural from his father’s childhood is tacked above the squat bureau. All of his clothes are rumpled in his laundry basket instead of folded inside. Something foreign is inside him, dragging a hook through his innards and making him feel sick and fitful. The light slipping into the room is hot on his skin, needling him with countless little claws when it scrapes against him. His door is shut, window too, and that makes him feel oddly confined. He doesn’t know what, but something isn’t right. Despite everything, the feeling is not menacing or foreboding; merely uncomfortable. He doesn’t resist it. It tugs at him from within and, like ink into water, he slides into himself beneath the fervent kiss of the moonlight. She sings to him, lilting and slow. His paws hit the floor when he rolls off the bed. Oren knocks back another glass with trembling hands. His vision has started to swim, but the warm rush of alcohol keeps him drinking. And drinking and drinking so he can sleep. The photo of Ana stares back at him, frozen in an amber-lit memory. 40
