My Cardboard Balcony

Artist's Guild by Belinda Roddie Salvador Dalí sliced pecan pie and Georgia O'Keefe drank champagne. I sat with Van Gogh and counted both scars and stars while the phonograph grumbled nearby. There were five of us together, the last being Pollock, who kept hitting the white walls with a stick painted blue. We ate off plates the hue and shape of water lilies and wished we could decorate the sky, like our own Sistine Chapel - but without the cherubs.

They say the man on the corner of seventh and Alistair had a longing for someone he had lost long ago. We didn't know much else besides that. All I could wonder was how old the man really was, especially since he looked so young. But the way he talked made him sound almost fifty years older than he appeared. He told stories the way my grandfather would, years ago, when he would bounce me on his knee beside the fireplace as the blizzard raged outside his little house.