My Cardboard Balcony

What Did You Expect? by Belinda Roddie You promised insanity, ignoring the adolescent strings of profanity, enjoying profit while forsaking humanity - enduring onslaughts of complaints so you could plan a date to your third estate because you wanted immortality, but you're so bleached with your illusion that reality is pushed away. You think you're God. In actuality, you know the truth; you see it in the eyes of youth drinking from the meager metaphorical soup. You. Are getting. Older. And grayer. And colder. Your bones and muscles ain't the way they used to be. Your heart won't beat the way it did during infancy. You'll be a raspy motherfucker with a bowel issue. You'll cry to nurses for morphine and a box of extra tissues, and when you realize that the hospital is echoing, you'll understand that while you claimed to be king, you ruined everything. You sucked away my future through a straw - I had to pay for happiness. You

Cecily eagerly blamed me for the splintering of her son Todd's bone, and I even more eagerly denied it. It was common knowledge in the household that Todd was a giant, six-foot-tall, sixteen-year-old klutz - and his recent tumble down the stairs was indicative of it. But Cecily was convinced that I had pushed him. "Why would I do that?" I demanded. "I like Todd."