My Cardboard Balcony

Since I am (once again) very tired after a long week of work, I've decided to present a series of questions I have now concerning my work and my life. Here goes: Does four square count for thirty minutes of aerobics each day? Why is it that the tougher I get on the kids, the more some of them like me? If a second grader writes me a thank you note with "I <3 You" over and over, that's innocuous, right? Does it make me a nerd if I write all the poems that my students are learning to read? Does it make me an even bigger nerd if I dress up as a hobbit for Halloween? Why does my girlfriend have to go to a college so far away? Why does the election season have to torment me so? Why can't I push myself to lose those twenty pounds I had lost last year and then gained back? Can I punch a scientist for concluding that chocolate cravings do not increase during - Well, I'm not fully completing that question on a public blog. Here's a quotation.

Photo Album by Belinda Roddie It’s all too strange When I take and rearrange the memories when I’m eighteen Of jubilees and summer festivities And faces caressed by the breeze Of a tender spring Thus they are rendered from one’s heartstrings Which hold each small past image like marionettes high Enough for me to see And then one day When dazy moon is pinned away In Mother’s breast, she’ll hold me near And whisper love songs in my ear And all the years that have passed will seem To be nothing more than just a dream And I wonder, should I use the key To release the memory? The work you see here has not been edited nor altered since June 26th, 2007.

The cherries, gone. The blackberry jam, gone. A loaf of bread, gone. Nothing but sweet syrupy stickiness on the counter with tiny fingerprints leading across the wall. I found him sleeping on the couch, the corners of his lips purple from his breakfast buffet. He was snoring. His white-blonde hair lay like a whirlwind against his pale head. I pulled an Afghan over him, drawing up his ankles in wool.