My Cardboard Balcony

Steel by Belinda Roddie Tin and aluminum folds, compresses into coils and worms, squeezed into cylinders, manufactured for the great consumer. Iron turns red and grows rusty even while enduring sun and storm and sleet, while the fences fray away. But steel is the color of the uniforms that streak across the chrome sky where all the cold marrow is sucked out of bone. We do not wish to fight with steel. We merely wish to build with steel. And until these towers are not toppled, even though we do not like it, we salute the men in steel, salute them fighting, salute them dying. In Memoriam.

I was thinking up a rather snide dilemma for the two-year-old chihuahua that was crying from its window just two houses down from me. My husband told me not to mess with the poor puppy, but when it was yapping like its ears were on fire, I just couldn't help but draft a plan to shut it up by forcing cookies down its throat, but that solution would serve only to be temporary. So as much as I tried to be evil, I just couldn't manage it, so I pet my big labrador and slept with my red head upon his back.