My Cardboard Balcony

You're Always Cute by Belinda Roddie You're always cute when you toss back your hair and giggle loudly as we board the trains to the main city, heading for the bare bones of the wharf and taking greater pains to scope out the hidden pirate-themed pubs where we drink rum and whiskey. Somehow, you are even cuter when you swear and rub your fingers together so that the blue of your nail polish flickers in the light above our heads. I offer you a glass, and you give me a kiss. I say, "Tonight, we dance," and you say, "I think now, I'll pass. I'd rather dance at dawn." And then you squeak another giggle and make my knees weak.

The footprint left behind was not human. But it did not belong to a dog, or a cat, or a bear, or a horse, or even something remotely mammalian. Yet it was not a remainder of a bird's trot, or a scrape of a frog's webbed feet, or even the wriggle of an extinct dinosaur's toe. I looked at it cautiously and did not know what to deduce from it.