My Cardboard Balcony

Murphy by Belinda Roddie Unsettled, he took to his large green chair in the middle of his bedroom, which was furnished with forest blemishes on all four walls. He lit a pipe and the smoke came out in stark white feathers that billowed across the empty space between him and the fireplace, the mantelpiece sparking tender amber in the ceiling light. Distressed, he reached for a bottle, a vice of displeasure for his mother and a quick and easy cheer for his father, because that was the way the story always went: a drunk patriarch and a Christian lady, vying for the title of "I told you so" parent while the son dipped one way or slouched the other. Murphy was not a drunk or a Christian; he was Jewish. When the medicinal dose did not soothe his aching throat, he rose to fetch a book from the highest shelf - a book bound with fretful threads of brass and bronze, with a great red cover that weighed more than the tome itself. He lifted the sheets of paper

I tried to find comfort after the night my girlfriend was found naked, mutilated, and unconscious in her bedroom. I tried to understand just what had happened. The walls of the hospital had become my second home, as I sat beside the woman I loved as the doctors tried to nurse her back to health. My fingers stroked the lacerations that were only just beginning to heal, and I struggled to stop my tears from striking her where it hurt the most.