My Cardboard Balcony

This Is My Arm by Belinda Roddie This is my arm. It's pierced, tattooed, inked, stained, strained, bulging, mottled, freckled, scabbed, and beautiful. It's an arm to link you to my body, when we walk down the aisle together at any event, not just a wedding. It's an elbow to brace against a table, a wrist to pivot a hand against your face, and five fingers branching from a tree trunk palm where the bark covers the life crease in my skin. You can have my arm. You can kiss it, and dream of clinging to it during the harshest winds of night. You can press your chin deep into the contours of my bone structure, the crook that gives me geometry, and the angle is ninety degrees when you are a part of it, and it's beautiful.

We had been catapulted into the unknown. Propelled into the murky abyss. Coiled and sprung like the bottom of a mattress to the dark, thick cushions of the impossible. We had landed feet first, our heels aching from the impact, and looked around, uncertain of where we were and how we had gotten there. But then Malcolm pointed out that we had been literally catapulted into an unknown space.