My Cardboard Balcony

NOTE: This poem was actually written on March 31st, 2016. I decided to hold off on posting it until I had performed it in front of the high school English class I am co-teaching, as part of a unit they were doing that involved performance poetry. Enjoy. To The Tightrope Walkers by Belinda Roddie I am faithful to a personal balance. I am devoted to an equilibrium. A tightrope has been tied between two rough lips of a gorge, and placing one foot after the other, I straddle the tense bridge that connects me to the other side, and once I reach it, I carefully turn around and go back the way I came, and so it goes, forever. I am not an acrobat by any stretch of the imagination, but I still expect myself to keep steady so I don’t fall into the deep ravine below, where one current takes me one way, and another takes me the opposite direction. Angry rapids and jagged rocks eagerly wait for me to succumb to a seemingly inevitable plunge. An F and an M are carved into th

"Well, this is a pain in the neck," Charlotte quipped sardonically as we sat cross-legged in her bedroom, eating chips and drinking her father's beer. "Either we get suspended or even expelled from school, or we end up wreaking havoc attempting to cover our tracks by silencing the principal. What a fucking dilemma!" "There's always kidnapping," Donald offered. "No, Donald. No kidnapping."