My Cardboard Balcony

The Two Of Us by Belinda Roddie The two of us were sitting on the dock when the moon swallowed up the sky and stars. You wore both a green and a purple sock, and you couldn't stop talking about cars and motorcycles. I was far away, absorbed in the glow of Diana's eyes, her bow taut and her arrow bright as day, quiv'ring like a bird does before it flies. I knew it wasn't practical to stare upon an orb thousands of miles away - no, hundreds of thousands - and yet, the hair stood up across my head. You didn't say a word about it, or seem to notice. You chatted idly in your endless bliss.

Shawn went to the grocery store to pick up some beef jerky and some lighters. She wouldn’t tell the cashier why she was buying the lighters, but she wasn’t a smoker; one look at her white, pristine teeth could tell you that. When she got home, she wrapped up the stray fingers in the plastic bag and buried it in a tree trunk. And then she used the lighters to set the tree on fire. And she watched the inferno while eating her pepperoni-flavored beef jerky.