My Cardboard Balcony

Ben Valentine Was Dead by Belinda Roddie Ben Valentine was dead by overdose of chocolate, boxes littered around his small apartment bedroom. The neighbors thought his girlfriend would be seeing him, but as she had broken up with him forty-eight hours prior, and he could not afford a bottle of strong whiskey, he decided to abuse his blatant diabetes. Poor Ben. They did not want him to succumb to shock, but as it were, he died without so much as a request for elegy or epitaph - he had not had so much of a significant life outside his small complex. But to neighbors, he'd be missed.

The sanctity of marriage is calculated by the high amount of testosterone that regulates the weight and length of facial and armpit hair on a pseudo-macho man who compensates for his little needle and spools with the level of alcohol he imbibes on a nightly basis; and the BMI of a woman who models for the sake of dominant affirmation in a world full of cheap department clothes, cologne, and saved tears in a bottle after gaining three more bruises.