My Cardboard Balcony

Mother Nature's Daughter by Belinda Roddie I made friends with the girl who grew flowers from her fingertips. Every day, she'd bequeath a bouquet to me - the petaled arteries of her age, each stem a blessing of her own oxygen and blood. I felt strange putting the roses in a vase. They had no thorns, so I presume she felt like she could let her guard down around me. Now, when I write letters to her, I describe my temperaments in bright red ink. There is nothing preventing her from becoming a living garden, each winding vine bursting out of skin that heals with every interval. I've checked her thumbs before, and they exude a wan, blue veined hue instead of a soil comfort green. I haven't received a cluster of her forget-me-nots for a few months now. Either she has forgotten me, or she has been rooted to the same spot behind a busy street, leaves bristling in the lion's den of her hair, chlorophyll adding color to her eyes, a forced and f

I knew he wanted to buy the house, but I wasn't ready to make an offer yet. I wasn't ready to give up the one place where I had felt safe for over seventeen years. It was amazing that I even had been able to afford the two-story abode, and I had lived in it alone the entire time. I felt like no one else deserved to take up that space.