My Cardboard Balcony

We Were Willing by Belinda Roddie She strips away her sorrows, layer by layer, in the shape of bundled wool, crocheted ideas on threads as thick as twine but handled as delicately as a spider taming her very first fragile web at dusk. She exposes the skin underneath, hot and firm. The tears on her face do not feel as warm as her flesh against my tongue. They are not as salty as I expected. The ocean is calm tonight. The brine is easier to drink, and more refreshing. There is a hesitancy in our movements. We change into our harlequin shirts, the ones we sleep in so our dreams are colorful and comedic. We drink late night tea. It is lukewarm. Everything is colder than our hands, knotted together like a tired fisherman's net, pulling his soggy entrails back to a somber shore. I turn on the baseball game. She finds a corner to read a book in. Old English poetry, fresh off the shelf and slightly smothered by the lips of jealous dust as thick and as clingy ...

The California Rocket Enthusiasts' Commission had been created by a man who had had enough of simply shooting mentos-bubbling soda bottles into the stratosphere, so he decided he'd do experiments similar to that with others who may have had more connections or money or both. Of course, he had decided to be its Grand High Chancellor - although Director or Chairman would have sufficed as a title. Needless to say, the actual rocket scientists and scholars were not amused.