My Cardboard Balcony

His Fingers Were Red And Raw by Belinda Roddie After I held his hand, he fetched a bottle of sanitizer. After I kissed him, he washed his mouth out with mean, green Listerine. I didn't know what kind of game he was playing, but I slapped him hard across his jaw, and I made sure I didn't scrub my hands first, just to make the fucker squirm. Once five years passed, I realized the extent of his compulsions. Once I heard him sobbing over the sink, the clarity struck me harder than I ever struck him. I don't get why I was so harsh, but I knew he was better off without me clinging to him, like a stain he could never clean off, like a bacterial reminder of his own breakdown.

The small restaurant's name was, in wooden paneling reminiscent of a TV set you would buy in the nineteen eighties - was simply "Nourish," and when you stepped inside, the smell of sterilized linoleum and just a hint of chai would rush up to your nostrils and commence a full-on battalion assault. When I first walked into Nourish, I was in the mood for a coffee. I felt like I had stumbled into a sanitized hipster hospital.