Sunny Nagpaul
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.
Sunny Nagpaul is a new writer currently living in Burlington, Vermont. She has been writing creatively for almost three years and has been exploring what it means to write poetry, prose, and nonfiction. She enjoys running fast, reading the news, and watching foreign films.
