My Cardboard Balcony

Nomad by Belinda Roddie This was not my bus stop two days ago. I've started living by the Friedman Street overpass since it started storming, and I'm too tired to make a fort out of my old coat like I used to. Somehow, I don't shiver as much as the night before. An old man offered me his transit ticket, though I think he was expecting me to seek some legitimate shelter - not a cold bunker beneath a concrete canopy. I used to ride buses more often, when my wife and I visited my mother on weekends. I remember she always smelled like lavender and dusty crochet kits. She was fond of the candles and the fraying balls of yarn. Sometimes, I wonder if she was part cat, the way she stowed herself among the strings and paper constellations in her mobile home. Now I hide under tarps when I can find them, until the cops corner me and kick the last of my eroding teeth in. My last bus stop led me to a hotel where my wife had overdosed on her last bottle

Is everything between us just a stunt, like the ones you pulled on movie sets, until you pulled your back out so far that it was like you were a marionette growing strings? Is every word we exchanged as worthless as zinc flattened out into currency that's rarely used and barely relevant that days? Look, it's raining outside, on a July afternoon. I'd like to see you drown in it.