My Cardboard Balcony

Mission, One AM by Belinda Roddie Tonight, the asphalt is hungry for rubber, in the form of tires and worn down sneakers, with holes big enough to let the smog in between your toes like greasy sidewalk chalk. Under the street lamp, an ex of mine smokes a cigarette and checks his glock to make sure it's loaded. He tasted like pennies the last time I kissed him. I take two steps from the hellhole that is a strip club to Owen's liquor store, where the window is still broken like a fragile jaw splintered under the weight of a metropolitan fist. Whisky and juice sound good to me: A bourbon apple pie from the bottle into my mouth, which still issues lingual soot when I exhale too loudly. My gun is an extension of my hip. The operation is complete. I am half human, half metal. My teeth are bullets, hot off the factory conveyor belt. The radio is the only good thing left in my jalopy. My father tried to drive this thing off a bridge ten years ago, but ...

I stopped reading after feeling strain behind my eyes, and as I sank into the mattress, the ceiling appeared to open up above me like the cracked white lips of an angel. I expected its gaping maw to expose stars and constellations above my head, even though I knew all too well that the sky outside was choked with browns and grays and everything dull and uninviting to the visual aesthetic. When I took off my glasses, everything still seemed just as clear, the fissures in the wall tricking me into thinking they were widening, rather than merely blurring.