My Cardboard Balcony

The Teppan Table by Belinda Roddie The teppan table hosted eight people, and you and I were two of them. We ate shrimp, sushi, scallops, steak, salmon, and bowls of rice. We talked until it'd gotten late, clapped when the chef did tricks with tools and knives, and enjoyed small talk with the strangers that we sat with, chatting about dogs and wives and traveling to Amsterdam. The laughs were contagious, the food sublime. I liked my time spent with you. You'd never eaten at a teppan table before, and I was happy to oblige you. This was when I realized, "Ah, so this must be heaven - our years together are at lucky seven.

This is what's left of your empire, my liege - this is what's left of your fiefdom. Piles of ash over twenty feet high where your towers once rose like tarantula's legs. Crumbling wastelands of brick and dead stone where you previously held your ceremonies. Your fortress is breaking like cake in my hands as my fingers linger along its walls. Life is impermanent, and so is your reign - accept it, and die like a man.