My Cardboard Balcony

My Advice? by Belinda Roddie She's got baggage, girl, and she's gotta check it in before she boards the plane, if you catch my drift. You wanna sleep with her, you gotta be mindful of the clutter she's swept up under her bed. Couple of drinks into the night, and your head's fuzzy enough to forget the details. But face it, you'll wake up in the morning, and the piles of drama are still there. Order a stack of pancakes for breakfast at the diner, get a free side of tragic backstory. If you can't handle it, I don't blame you. She's a meteor ready to crash into the earth, and if you collect the debris, you can add it to your collection of emotional burden so it glitters like an extraterrestrial romance.

I wanted to delete everything from my life. Erase it with a metaphorical wad of rubber and leave the eroded graphite behind. But everything was in ink, and unless I burned it, the story would remain. And I did not want to die by fire. Sitting by the bus stop, I drank from a lukewarm bottle of champagne and contemplated the events of the night. People shuffled past me, staring at my disheveled hair and tousled suit. Someone, they accurately thought, had been jilted.