My Cardboard Balcony

Raccoons on the Road by Belinda Roddie It was as if they all hit the pavement at the same time. Their masks pulled on, they shuffled across the asphalt in clicks and scrambles. They didn't see the cars coming, but they heard the roar, and they smelled the smoldering rubber. I wear my own mask as I drive by their flattened carcasses. From three dimensions to two dimensions, these overgrown rodents have escaped their corporeal heists for a great big trash can in the sky. And somewhere, they're gnawing on an apple core, working out their ethereal jaws. I might tattoo the shadows around my eyes. The odor of my engine is both stale and steel. I am a factory worker wishing I could be nocturnal - breaking off from the industry and scrounging for meager sustenance, leftover luxuries tossed by people sipping soup from quartz ladles with their faces free of rascal's paint.

Someone told me to jump off a cliff, so I did. Broke quite a few bones, but I survived. When I went back to school about a month later, I walked up to my classmate and said, "Okay. Jumped off a cliff. Want to pay my hospital bills?" She couldn't stop staring at me. I mean, c'mon. I love her more than anything. Of course I was going to do anything she told me to do. But then she started slowly backing away, and I realized that everyone else seemed perturbed by me.