My Cardboard Balcony

Love's Ennui by Belinda Roddie From my window, the cotton fog lazes tonight, blank stare, eyes glazed over, while you sit in your corner, sucking honey from the gaps in your teeth. The amber is listless in your glass tonight. Ripple by ripple, the reservoir is drained. Your throat is in the throes of its worst drought. You don't find it easy to speak. It is both cold and hot tonight. I think my memory's finally fading. It's too late to reset old lust, so I try to find solace in stickiness instead, the burning fat throbbing beneath my dreams, the crisp deterioration of a past life's ambitions.

She told me I didn't have to be so difficult, that we would only be staying for a few days, and I'd barely even have to see my parents at all if we went out enough. But the idea of even staying in their house - whether or not in the guest room - was enough to make my skin crawl and the contents of my stomach to almost curdle. I did want ever want to return to their residence, and yet here I was, being heckled by my sister to do just that.