My Cardboard Balcony

Time To Be A Pain by Belinda Roddie I'll hover around your bedside until you wrap your arms around my pelvis, drag me toward the cavern of sheets, nuzzle me between your goodies, and swing me round and round in dream land on a rainbow tire lifted by a neon rope. Yep, time to be a royal pain in the ass until you love me, damn it, love me, until my eyes dry out and my tongue goes gray and my words flop out like loose flags flapping in the stale Confederate breeze. Don't make me beg for a crisis, to get you to pity me. I don't want to be pitied. I want the absolute chaos of your body against mine, warm syrupy goddess sugar seeping over my pores, clogging them, until I break out in big, red stars, and I light up like the Milky Way on E, swiveling, swaying, until I collapse against your chest, breathe in once, and start leaking.

When the poor creature sneezed, I wanted to say, "Bless you," but my cousin would say that wouldn't be right, because animals allegedly have no souls, according to his little black pocket book of spongy cake faith. But as I knelt beside the hound and scratched it behind its ears, watching its nostrils moisten with snot, I had to bless it. It was too cute not to have a soul. I would not have it any other way!