My Cardboard Balcony

Before Bombardment by Belinda Roddie Details, scrawled out in militant rows, with dirty uniforms, dead guns, and snakes made of ammo hissing at the sunset. Numbers in a computer that only runs when you plug it into the source. In the trench, I pull you toward me. The brass buttons on your jacket are sticky. Your braided cap hides the crescent moons of your eyes. Here, we huddle and heat each other up with our bodies, our fragile bodies, our shaking, stuttering bodies. Words tremble in our stomachs; they threaten to rise up like yellow bile. Here, for a while, we do not hear the rockets or the bombs. The dragons are sleeping, and so we simply breathe on one another's faces instead of reciting our prayers. Beyond the front line, the generals meet again. Their suits are clean, and they wear no hats. Their heads shine brighter than the smile of a warhead's heat shield. They do not laugh, but they think about mirth filling their champagne glasses and t...

I had been sleeping in until ten o'clock for days now; I knew that, and my family knew that. Therefore, I was startled when, one chilly morning, I felt awake and alive around six AM. I don't know what spurred me on, but a sudden heat that almost felt like it was crackling in my bones rocketed me out of bed. I pulled on my clothes, tied on some hiking boots, and without thinking much on it, found myself hiking up the hill near my parents' house.