My Cardboard Balcony

Exploring The Netherworld by Belinda Roddie It smells like rose water and age and evaporation as I raise my thumb to my nostrils breathe in slowly so that my own odor wafts its way into my body again and settles like condensation on a windshield It smells like perfume and hand sanitizer like if someone choked the life out of a flower or pressured a meadow to breathe out of its mouth instead of its nose You can smell it, too, but you pretend you can't because if you recognized the cologne, you would be triggered and disturbed and you would hide under the bed until the monster moved out

Joseph wanted to become a paramedic, but he could never pass the fitness test. And trust me, he tried everything - diets, shakes, daily trips to the gym. Pumping iron, running on the elliptical machine, even learning how to kickbox. But no matter how hard he tried, his arms had the consistency of penne pasta. "You're just a wimp," his girlfriend said to him when he moped about it one night. She soon became his ex-girlfriend after that.