My Cardboard Balcony

The Racer by Belinda Roddie broad gold helmet, shoes strapped in perfect place, the vessel streaming with technicolor consumerism, yellow logos melting like butter in a screaming redneck sun. the last cool moments before hot burning rubbers stinks up the air and the flames threaten to kick over the bucket and pour out oil from the skeleton of victory.

"Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by thy name..." I wasn't listening to the Lord's Prayer. Or the priest's heavy breathing. Or my mother's muttering as she clenched my hand. I felt the pressure of bodies around me, the heat of fingers and palms, the warmth radiating from old women's cheeks and old men's noses. I tried to focus on the movement of oxygen and carbon dioxide weaving in and out of pious Catholic nostrils.