My Cardboard Balcony

We Meet Again by Belinda Roddie Sore fingers on frets and old friends by your side, playing songs you wrote years ago that still sound new and fresh in your ears. The night's infantile and infinitesimal in the grand scheme of your life, but it's a light in the sky, a star guiding your smile and time. Or maybe it's just an airplane heading south. At least, that's what caught one of your buddies off guard when figuring out which way was north. It starts to get cold out, but the strings are still hot against your hands. Pizza and waffles are warm in your stomach. Hot cider and whiskey await you when you return to your temporary home for the week. You plan to sleep well tonight, and drink and laugh and sing more as the year closes its December door.

The choir sang, "Hallelujah!" and the walls came tumbling down. I watched the bricks fall one by one in red and brownish dust, the gray plumes rising like the ashes of my ancestors. I saw the whole church crumble around us, until we had nothing but the outside trees, the chilly air, and the intact wooden pews holding us up with the smoke still billowing across the pages of our leather psalm books. And my mother kept singing.