My Cardboard Balcony

Late Night Snack by Belinda Roddie I found the cut off crusts of your peanut butter and jelly sandwich in our beagle's food bowl, already growing moldy. You were curled up on the couch, watching soccer and giggling every time a fullback pretended that he had been severely injured. When I reached down to stroke your hair, you flinched like I was going to hit you. If only you knew I am not like your mother or your father, looming over you in the smallest corner of your room when you were a child, snapping a belt to make it sound like a snake lunging to strike, refusing to let you eat cookies and milk - and peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches, the sugar oozing from your pores as I finally got to kiss you good night.

Ketchup on my sleeve, coffee on my pants, still not going to change when I join my friends to dance. There'll be whiskey sloshed around, and beer spilled on the ground, and I'll just swirl with all the stains and never form a frown. I'll go home with the smears, my make-up wet like tears, the splatters of all three meals as I sleep for thirty years.