My Cardboard Balcony

When the Sun Melts by Belinda Roddie when the sun melts into the butter tin, you know it's time to bring out the ancient waffle iron - the one you got from your grandfather who told stories about fairies in his own backyard. growing in tufts, no less, like pixie weeds, on a stardust midnight. when you stir in the flare just enough, you might just catch the syrupy sweetness of a Moher morning, when the sugar finally precedes the salt, and you're left with a banjo player for a husband and an accordion extraordinaire for a son, and they're both raring to go for Irish breakfast with beans, when all you want is the old-fashioned fluff - puffed from worrying, fanned out by history, sweetened by time.

She startled me, the way she looked at me. The frock coat bundled tight against her bosom, but the hem of it bristling just perfectly against her hips. The modest pink lipstick, tasseled at the curled corners, just slightly, to get the effect. The swiveling of whiskey on cold, crystalline rocks against her miraculously gloved ivory hand. I was disoriented by it. And I liked it.