My Cardboard Balcony

God Needs No Incense by Belinda Roddie Brick by brick by brick the church falls down, the dust doesn't settle. It swirls in an endless discus flung high by a deity as red-faced as the sun's left eye. She will spin the world round and round and round until there are no temples left - no altars, no disciples, no more lambs bleeding from their ears. Just the sweet simplicity of ash and smoke and crumbling stone, brittle as bone, chunks of false glorification lost to the future's embers.

In the middle of the apple grove, the two girls feasted on the harvest. The sky was dark and thick with clouds, and whatever golden light managed to squirm its way through from the sun lit up patches of dry grass in sparks and speckles. One of the girls tossed a core aside and wiped her hands on the short part of her skirt, her eyes straying toward the little house where her mother was most likely making dinner. "Some day," she said to her friend, "I'll have my own apple orchard."