My Cardboard Balcony

Besieged Ex-Lover by Belinda Roddie By launching the grenade, you've exposed your right arm mid-hurl. The tattoo of amber eyes glaring from your lopsided elbow is haunting me from a distance. I cannot shield my sanity in a no man's land, all my words shredded by imagined barbed wire. You are too close for comfort, yet too far to touch. Your chest heaves beneath your shirt. There's a tattoo there, too, of something far more daunting. Verse. Scripture. Distorted sainthood with a halo built from briar. I kissed you once. You nearly bit my tongue off. I wait for the patrol to stomp me out. I wait for the barber to shave my head again for my sins. My scalp is painted violet - even the blind witness my defiance. And yet I refuse to take it all back. And you will have to live with that.

“You two make a really good couple,” the old lady said to me and my fiancée, and my spirits were instantly lifted. I found myself enjoying my hot chocolate more, walking with a larger skip in my step, and feeling the dimples in my cheeks stretch as my smile became more natural than forced. My fiancée definitely noticed. “You are just glowing,” she remarked, squeezing my hand and kissing me on the cheek. But I was more than just glowing. I was radiant