My Cardboard Balcony

First Degree Burn by Belinda Roddie The majestic plume of a black pot's steam can scald a lover's skin something awful - she nurses the tender spot where all passion moves into a single, red-veined spider web's eye, and every gaze fixes on the birth of the emotional Cyclops. She leaves swatches of aloe vera on her arm, like samples of colorless paint on an already angry canvas, and tries to enjoy the comedy on TV instead of the schadenfreude lingering where she didn't use to feel pain. For now, the mental anguish has ceded territory to the physical realm of discomfort, and so she lifts her wrist above her head, where the air turns slightly colder, to soothe the impending scar, and where her pitying, yet helpless, betrothed cannot kiss it and somehow make it worse.

Here is my house of worship, and here is my place at the pew. Here is the bowl of wafers and the chalice of very, very weak wine. It glistens golden in the light that glows from the stigmata in Christ's palms. Somehow, his fingers weave together as the splinters procreate among his knuckles. I am praying for a safe haven in a haven that no longer feels safe. The priest is talking to the altar boys in the next room. He is sweating around his collar.