My Cardboard Balcony

Welcome To The Club by Belinda Roddie Cabernet flows like blood from a glassy open wound. We drink the nectar of the gods until the room spins like an ornate top. Stained glass faces of saints stare at us during the vertigo. Again, again, again, we are given wastebaskets to expel our sins into, liquids and solids and gases all at once. At the bar, you kissed a woman on the balcony while she kept her hair in a bun. She loosened up by the time your tongue made a heaven out of her mouth, a celestial halo hovering over both of you, clinging to mortality as the prophets looked on. Look up, look up! The city has eyes. They gaze upon you with frosty blue impartiality. Hear the fools debate and listen to their songs, all composed of gibberish and prior restraints. We were born to drink and pass out, so that the dawn feels new to us each time. The sunrise provides us with an opportunity we never imagined before. The taste of vomit is gone. We are stale shadows, while y...

I managed to break away from it all ten years ago, escaping in my father's beaten up minivan while he was sleeping at five in the morning. Was it worth it? Even now, I'm not so sure. I've worked odd jobs since I ran away - at restaurants, auto shops, retail stores, even construction sites - I'm kind of a poor man's Renaissance individual. Sometimes, I wonder if staying home and enduring my father's abuse while continuing my education would have resulted in anything better.