My Cardboard Balcony

You Drank Coffee by Belinda Roddie There was something extraordinarily green about your eyes, tingling olives suspended in a murky martini wonderland, and you used those pristine fruits to glower at me behind the table of gossip, laced with intoxicating vocabulary, hand-tossed words on Caesar, with the "Et tu?" echoing - and I could not blame you for that. You drank coffee, smoky Joe's café brunch special, but at ten o'clock at night - breathing fumes of fields, the laborers dancing on your tongue. You didn't care about verbal stimuli, the forked back and forth innuendo of debate served greasy on a bed of balsamic vinaigrette, the emulsion of black pepper on rye. You were made uneasy by my smile, and I could not blame you for that. Now, we became two, instead of one - the cellular mitosis of conflicting regimens, the siamese becoming fraternal fast, the nucleus bubbling into red lava lamp floaters in the sinister line of vision held above...

In the small café, they were serving hot chocolates to any homeless person who stumbled in for warmth. The blizzard had not let up for eight days now, and no cars budged from their snowy nests, and no lights emitted ever gave enough heat to thaw out fingers and loosen water from in between lips and in between eyelids. One matted woman in particular asked for espresso in the cocoa, and they gave it. Never before had they seen sparklers in a winter lady's eyes.