My Cardboard Balcony

I Walk Around by Belinda Roddie I walk around in circles 'til I trip and fall, my knees all scraped from the debris. I try to speak, and I'm afraid I'll slip into a foreign tongue that I can't speak - or at least haven't spoken since the years in which I hobbled over desert plains to find a new life with my mother dear. I remember my grinning through the pain, icing my feet after so many days of walking without end - in a straight line, over hills and across dunes. As I gaze across the water, I see left behind a father and family I adored. I can't move forward, so I circle more.

I've never realized just how much one light can be so good at its job. I've seen rooms illuminated before, but never with such a potent amber glow like this one. I stand in the middle of the room, and my shadow lounges on the trodden carpet, basking in what is almost a miniature, personal sun, cupped in both hands before being transferred into a jar.