My Cardboard Balcony

No Other Option by Belinda Roddie Mother, you expected the aesthetic of the prosthetic to be smoother, leaner, meaner, and more efficient. You shift on one hip and take trips to the bathroom, where you debate a veneer for your mirror. Father, you felt sick to your stomach when the cold, slick knife made its way into her dull, muted flesh. The death of the tissue was a brand new testament to you and your wife: Chapter Sixty in your book of epiphanies, and mortality. Ah, the pining magenta-rimmed nostalgia of another baby boomer amputee. And I, I find solace in deshelling clams for dinner, prying soft white and gray bodies from their cold attached homes. I deshell and deshell and deshell them in a kitchen packed with appliances older than I am - jarred heirlooms more resilient than I am, bird blue and lime green and gold. Those sad little gastropods do not have limbs to worry about losing; only the puckering air of a 1990's Frigidaire. I will eat with y...

Everything that you order, he does for you. You ask him to run, and he'll break his own legs racing across painful terrain and unfriendly territory. You ask him to jump, he'll climb to the tallest peak of a mountain and leap from its pointed nose into the ravine below. And if he's still alive and functioning by then, you could ask him to get you the finest tea in China, and if you give him a few days, weeks, or months, he'll come crawling back to you with teabags and a splintered smile.