My Cardboard Balcony

¿Estás Borracha? by Belinda Roddie "¿Estás borracha?" a bus-goer asked me plaintively more than skeptically as I dripped mucus across his armrest, dangerously close to staining the sleeve of his Giants jacket. I promptly forgot how to reply in his preferred language, so I laughed and sprayed a non-verbal negative response to his question that I'm fairly certain he didn't quite fathom. Disgusted, he looked at who must have been his wife, cradling their five-to-six-year-old daughter in her arms. She had the orange "SF" stamped on her cheek, the proper temporary tattoo demonstrating an imposed, juvenile enthusiasm for a game with balls and sticks either in a man's hands or between his legs. And I chuckled. And I spat some more. And it wasn't until I was off the bus and halfway down Valencia that I came up with a response that I so wished I could have yanked from my soaked cerebrum sooner. "No, no estoy borracha. Sólo estoy c...

It was growing exceedingly difficult for Ms. Stein to write letters to her grandson, for the arthritis in her right hand caused the entire body of tissue beneath her knuckles and skin to flare up so it was like someone was branding her arm with an iron similar to searing the flesh off of a cow. But she insisted on writing letters - she loved her penmanship, and she sincerely loathed computers. Nasty metal things, eating up money and time.