My Cardboard Balcony

Are You Silver? by Belinda Roddie you look silver to me. silver- tongued, silver-browed, silver- headed and silver-doused. silver- drunken, smoking silver ringlets in your husband's copper hair. i am golden. look at me! i am stereotypically golden. I drink mead laced with elixir. i type letters out in flaxen. i use ink that's made of gold dust. i am the boy who cried gold tears when told i'd be melted down for amulets. but i escaped, and everything and every- one looks like precious metal to me now. and you, my dear, are silver, and could make a pretty ring on my sculpted index finger.

The two soldiers took their handkerchiefs and tied it around each other's forearms as an act of solidarity, and as both the blue and red scraps of fabric bristled in the air between them, one could notice the fraying ends of their accessories, given to one another as a mark of fellowship. The female soldier, tall and broad-shouldered, saluted the male soldier, who merely bowed his head and exhaled sharply through his nostrils. Behind them, the tanks rolled by in an awkward procession, their generals casting them gray looks as they disappeared from the dune.