My Cardboard Balcony

She Sat Outside by Belinda Roddie She sat outside with her cigarette lit, the night sky loud and bright above her head. "You, I'm getting tired of this shit, all the drug and the smoke and booze," she said. I stood there on the balcony with her, my own stogie burning my knuckle. I puffed one more time and proceeded to hurl the stump three floors down to the pavement. Why were we so numbed by the Bacardi? How had we both one to this, battered and worn down to almost nothing? I wondered now if all the family ties that we had torn apart could be mended. She didn't say another word, the ash in her mouth gray.

They stood as still as statues, letting the rain sink into their skulls. Their bodies were pierced to high heaven, and water filled up all their holes. They gurgled and they choked on Mother Nature's weepy deluge. By the time the storm finally broke, they were submerged in Atlantis's blue. And there, they were really statues, all bone and fossilized, awaiting a scuba diver's gaze or a scientist's curious eyes.