My Cardboard Balcony

No Show by Belinda Roddie Absent from class again, the drizzle of questions falling awkwardly against the desk with broken erasers stacked in a puzzling monolith of detail. The teacher had said she'd be healing quickly from the accident, but it's very hard to take a step forward when the foot needed to take said step with was nearly crushed between the pedal and the caved-in steering column. And the hospital bed is warmer than a textbook, and the food is still better than the gruel served to Oliver Twist in the cafeteria, and somehow, the sterile lighting is more comforting than the glow of the nineties' projector casting intimidating print on the walls. Absent from class again, with the car shrapnel scars still exposed on her skin, and maybe she won't come back.

What have I just witnessed? A naked old man bleeding from both of his thighs, screaming for the goddess Demeter. A woman on a white horse, swinging a scepter against the side of a bull's head, cracking the skull just beneath its majestic horn. Across the grass, there is a sticky residue, which smells faintly, and sweetly, of honey. I think I won't go into my father's mushrooms after this.