My Cardboard Balcony

This Tin Ornament by Belinda Roddie This tin ornament used to look like an elf building a toy, but now it seemed more like a strange, mutated reindeer with an ankle problem. Still, I hung it on the Christmas tree each year because it was the ornament that reminded me most of home. It reminded me of the nights my father and I drank egg nog beside the blinking lights. Of when my mother and I visited the Holiday House down the street, where they passed out candy canes. Of the first time I brought a girl home and kissed her underneath the mistletoe. This mess of an ornament returned me to bliss.

Three large, red plumes of smoke gurgled from between the slats of the window - thick and bitter like dark, unsweetened chocolate; globs of chemicals as heavy as the puddles left by the river after a heavy storm. Paul had taken up smoking again, and he only picked the rarest tobacco.