My Cardboard Balcony

Childhood Hideout by Belinda Roddie Under the couch, we find the keys to an attic that leads us to odd antiques: clocks that don't tick right, and jewelry that doesn't fit right, and enough hats to cover the heads of everyone in California and Texas combined. You pull on a fedora that belonged to your grandfather. You look so suave, but your smile is frail. I want to give it strength by kissing it, but my lips are pale, and quivering, and cold. We promise that this secret place is ours and ours alone, and as the years squeak by, we drink the dust like wine. We weave the cobwebs into clothing, and we're silver like a cemetery, hearing the rattling of watches that tell us the hour, but never when it's time to leave.

Both Seamus and Rowan stayed in the Old Man's Fortress just on the edge of the Wine Dark Continent. They did not speak to each other. They did not take note of one another's presence. In fact, it was common knowledge that Rowan remained in the western wing of the fortress, while Seamus resided in the eastern wing. And both of them spent hours reading and writing. The Old Man's Fortress had belonged to a baron about seventy odd years back; no one remembered that, however, because the baron was a raging, inhospitable drunk who had squandered one small town's fortune, causing it to become abandoned and for the noble himself to become nameless - ergo, it was a perfect residence for the isolated and poetic siblings.