My Cardboard Balcony

Log Cabin in the North by Belinda Roddie These footsteps outside my door belong to no friends of mine. No loved ones stomp the snow from their boots when the blizzard is shaggy white. I light a candle to see my own shadow fleeing from the window. It wants to see me once in a while, but it's too shy to stay in winter.

Grandmother suffered her third cancer relapse two months, and despite my parents' protests, it was back to chemo. There was one thing you could never say about my gram, and that was the idea that she wasn't a fighter. She was more than a soldier; she was a five star general braving D-Day in World War II. And when I visited her in the hospital, she flashed me a thumbs up and didn't even wince when the nurse stuck the IV needle in. "Gotta get my fluids," she said. "You've been hydrating, too, I hope."