My Cardboard Balcony

The Nile by Belinda Roddie On the Nile one day, a majestic ship of white princesses with their hair frizzed and lips red careened across the currents kicking algae to the rocks and the voice of the Nile said, go forth, and paid no heed to the wreckage of life and broken shore the princesses left behind. Then a little boat teetered across the troubled foam where a girl in boys' clothing asked for safe passage but the Nile coiled up like a snake and refused to hear her, sealing its watery ears to pleas and honest cries. And as the boat crashed, the girl fled and took the weary road instead.

Daniel had packed a dessert for his trip to the desert. He brought along a case of water and a bottle of bourbon. He set up a picnic with no one to eat with. He read a Hemingway book. He fell asleep in the sand. When he woke up, he had a Rip Van Winkle beard and the desert was now a valley, with clear running streams. And when he drank from it, it tasted like mud and sand and the parched sensation of a dead man.