My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie She thought it was over. She was sure that there was no way it could happen again. It did. It came back, and it was crueler and more painful than ever. She was left contorted against her cot at nights, one hand clutching her head while the other gripped the ivory frame so tightly that all of the color dripped away from her fingers. More than once, she would faint from the agony, and she would wake up with blood still pooling from her flared nostrils. The first two times it happened, she went to the innkeeper for more pillows. When he began to grow frustrated with seeing the smears of red on his sheets, she would flip over the cushions a few times so that the blood could dry, and she could finally attempt to sleep. The migraines she suffered through were nothing new to her, though the reprieve had lasted a good twenty years at this point. It was a minor fraction of the number of years she had actually lived - or endured, perhaps, was a more accurate word - but it

"If all else fails," commented Harold, "we'll have to..." "We'll have to?" He sighed. "We might  have to reconsider everything. Look, you and I want to be walking down the same path here. But if you're successful and I'm not, or if it's the other way around...well, you know how that can change the dynamic in a relationship. Usually badly." "How can you say that?" I demanded. My beer was getting warm in its glass. "I mean, how can you lack so much confidence in us?"