My Cardboard Balcony

Fool Me Once by Belinda Roddie I can't believe I lost a bet to the Devil himself while he was wearing a top hat and smoking a corncob pipe. Now I have to parade around town in a miniskirt and stab children with a pitchfork while chanting curses in an incomprehensible tongue.

Cold. Tired. Miserable. Just call me a bum, all right? I'm chilling on your street corner - specifically your street corner - scrounging for coins underneath wet layers of newspaper and broken straw wrappers. I'm writing a funny message on a frayed piece of cardboard and asking for beer, when in reality my liver's failing and I've got a gut bigger than Jupiter. I'm particularly interested in making sure you - yes, you - feel grossly uncomfortable as you sidle past my cold, tired, miserable husk of a body, as I sleep beneath the shade of a drugstore's awning until one in the afternoon.