My Cardboard Balcony

I Picked You Up by Belinda Roddie I picked you up beside the highway and nursed the cuts on your legs after your truck broke down along the dry grasses and sand that churned up dusty winds. Quickly, you struck me as a quiet type, more inclined to twiddle with my radio than respond to any hint of conversation. You were beautiful. You were kind. You were fond of the desert flowers, pointing to them as we drove through arid towns, hot cities, the air conditioner abused. You held a stem of something in your hand. Nothing witty came from me when I dropped you off beside an old home, which you used to stay and hide.

The watchtower was crumbling beneath the guardian's feet, and he swayed and stumbled to keep upright while the others continued to sleep. And the soldiers were all shaking from their nightmares far away, where the grass was brown and dying and the sky forever gray. It was imminent, the falling, the collapse of the old nation - a new cry for reformation and a new civilization. And the guardian would finally tumble from his sad monolith, where the stone would turn to dust, dust to nothing, life to myth.