My Cardboard Balcony

Was I Smiling? by Belinda Roddie Sluggish Sunday crepuscule, when the moon was supersized like a triple cheeseburger, sesame seed craters all along its sirloin face - and we drifted along the park like hang-gliders, fists intertwined so our knuckles became cushions - was I smiling, then? Did I enjoy your faded features against the glaring light of the dystopia, blurring fast against neon stares behind firefly spectacles, the prism rims lighting up again and again and again until they sparkled with an addicting two-dimensional vigor? Because if I did not smile, I was thinking of smiling, if only to see the sun rise on your fiery eyebrows, the singed residue of yesternight still glinting like embers on your lips, the cinders cascading from your shoulders, with the ash of our adventure painted across our cheeks and making us cough from smoked ecstasy.

They said it was a day in which I should be particularly joyous - but too many things were chafing at me, exposing the raw, blistered part of my brain that was moderately used for dreaming. Yes, the rainbow flags were billowing this morning in California, but in Greece, the camps were set up, and the smog from the adjacent cities were blowing in to paint dust on the tear-stained faces of citizens who simply wanted a body that fit them.