My Cardboard Balcony

We're Dancing by Belinda Roddie We're dancing in the ocean after ten, and Jesus would be jealous of our poise, our toes bobbing along. We can suspend our bodies over salt and foam and noise from deep beneath us. Whales sing lullabies as I dip you in my arms, while the breeze skips across waves and up to darkened skies. A confused man glides by on water skis, but we don't need to explain ourselves. Stars come out one by one, lighting up a path back to the shore. The sound of passing cars bring us back to reality. We slap the water off our feet, toes dredged with sand, as we remember both our lives on land.

He slaves away at his desk all night, the sweat collecting in strings across the nape of his neck like brand new hairs he doesn't want. As his fingers cramp, he checks the time and realizes how long it's been since he's slept. Half a day now. He edits and omits and changes and adds until the world outside is dark again. And yet, he is not even a third of the way through. Data entry. He has to be the ghost writer for a memoir about data entry.