My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie Goodbye, friends. I am off to the world of lullabies and dreamscapes. I am taking up an oar and rowing across the Styx where it connects to the Aegean Sea. I will take a trident to the Kraken before washing ashore onto an island where cows are revered as gods and birds carry messages from forgotten kings. And I will maintain a throne made out of coconuts, because it just seems appropriate given the climate of the area. Some say that there is a dwarf in the fields who will give you gold if you sing him your favorite song. Then you dance, and he grows displeased. He exchanges your gold for silver due to your audacity. And yet silver is what buys you a house and helps you raise a family. Only your children are not human, but mutations of something far, far more beautiful. They are mythological entities. They are Chimaeras. They breathe fire to heat up the pot where you boil their macaroni and cheese. And sometimes, I will see you there. I will find you petting oxen

She wore a violet scarf, while her wife donned a violet neckties, and the violets crowning the tombstone were beautiful. They knew that the color, the flower - they were important to their daughter. They remembered that the dress she was buried in was violet. The jewelry, too. And her own daughter, their granddaughter, was already being drawn to purple, to the last beautiful color of the rainbow over their heads.