My Cardboard Balcony

You Left Us by Belinda Roddie You left us, Father, for another child and wife. Our family just wasn't good enough for you anymore. My once wild younger sister? I tamed her, while you stood in front of the altar with your new dame. My brother? He's a football star acing all of his classes. Mother's not the same, either, you know. She's stronger, stopped drinking, and made some friends, found some new passions, no thanks to you. We've snagged summer jobs, no thanks to you. The three of us worked hard to go to fully paid college programs, no thanks to you. You left for a new child and wife but also left us all a better life.

I heard her footsteps outside my door, the scuffing of leather boots against the straw mat. A couple of clicks and snaps, then a rush of hot air, signaled that she was lighting a cigarette. I was not inside my house. I was, instead, in the garden on the left side, tending to the squash plants that I had watered a few hours earlier when the sun wasn't so hot and heavy in the sky.