My Cardboard Balcony

And Do You by Belinda Roddie There was a wedding I officiated at the local park, where the pond lay stagnant, but the breeze was warm and the poppies grew in golden tufts like lions' crowns on a kingdom of green. The two people I married wore tailored black suits and red ties, though their boutonnieres sported completely different flowers: a yellow rose and a violet for the ease of Summer's journey, its chariot gliding across a horizon, trimmed with the emperor's braid. The words I spoke were not my own but theirs instead. I recited poetry once kept in books tucked under beds. I drank the vows in like champagne before the fathers could even give their toasts. Behind spectacles, I saw the sun's descent.

Gee, Papa, I wish I could grow a beard like yours. A beautiful, bushy beard that hides your smile. A beard that makes you rugged like a lonely mountaineer. A beard that keeps the cold out and the heat against your lips. A beard that tickles ladies' faces when you kiss them, one by one. I won't let Mama know, no. I promise that I won't. I'll just grow a beard like yours one day so no one knows who we are.