My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie All at once, the woods were awake. The trees writhed and screamed a painful wake-up signal - a high-pitched yet guttural rumble among the foliage and the deep brown soil that smelled faintly of store bought perfume. The wind swarmed about the drooping branches and whispered instead of whistled, the language indecipherable in the cold air of the carnal morning. The birds, rather than singing, bristled the lobes of each ear with their vicious flapping of their wings, every feather slurping up mist and fog with a stroke and brush of the sky's blue veins. I rose slowly from the rags that served as my bed among the wilderness, my eyes dry and a sour flavor lingering behind my lips in the sticky folds of my gums and tonsils. The sounds of the area did not alarm me, nor did they faze me. I was used to the cacophony, having been traveling through here for a good dozen days now, never seeing the edge of the forest during all the time I had walked. Unclasping the cha...

We found shelter in the form of a lost cabin, broken down and splintered in the Sonoma rain. The vineyards surrounding the bare-boned acres of the property were withered and brown, some ends scorched as if by flame. It was clear that the troops had gone through here before, scouring for survivors. But after that, it was as if they had been happy with leaving the ghost behind.