My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie Eleazer blew on the pinwheel, and as the shiny plastic spun, his reflection therein aged backwards. He did not quite believe it at first, not until he had sported a full brown beard, something altogether different from the white garish strands that he become accustomed to seeing on his chin. He could only smile at his newfound youth for a brief moment until the wind picked up about him and the pinwheel spun the other way. As his eyebrows began to gray and thicken, in a heavy fright he clamped his hand down on the fragile star and blocked it from the cold. As he tramped back to his small cottage on the outskirts of the small Irish town, he furiously bolted the door, slammed the round little window shut, and drew the meager red curtain, so that not a wisp of a zephyr could disturb him. Feeling the creak in his back once more, Eleazer inhaled deeply and allowed himself one slight puff against the pinwheel. Its edges spun like fire, and the rich oaken color returne

The symbiotic android's heart branches outward into three black, separate limbs. The first of the limbs carries the oxygen of good will. The second, hydrochloric carelessness. The third, a medicinal dose of happy. In the core of the android's heart is a clear fluid, which throbs and pulses with the general human emotions of love and hatred. It is a simple tree, nothing else.