My Cardboard Balcony

She Hits Hard, She Hits Well by Belinda Roddie Drinking red wine at a tavern landlocked with a pizzeria, I catch the reflection of my scratched knuckles against a fragile crystal stem. Beneath the upper middle class presentation - the button-down white shirt with clip-on bowtie, the brown corduroys and semi-new loafers - I am a whole new level of human cartography. See on my shoulder the rise of a new continent, swelling outward, protruding. New land! New promise! Columbus swivels toward my hematomas as if regaining a sense of direction. My purpuras are temporary tattoos of uncharted territories, just discovered by the fists of someone who drinks far stronger things in her glass than I do in mine. I am with six colleagues, all laughing, their faces tinged with whites and blues from their phones, the clicks and taps of keys on fingers, keys in jacket pockets, keys pushed into my brain, deep, until the dents are sharp enough to fall into. I am not opposed to this ...

We were building castles out of stones and sticks, leaves glued onto the surfaces of granite and quartz with sticky mud from last night's deluge from the creek. Nearby, the adults were all working hard to clear the soaked sand bags that had done so little to protect their houses from the flooding. While the rain had finally subsided, the gutters were all still clogged, leaving large puddles for the kids to splash in and the grown-ups to shake their heads dismally about.