My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie These are just angry nightmares - these silhouettes and monsters' alibis. They drag me through Manhattan until Broadway swallows me whole, and all I see is lights. Distorted, red lights. The show has begun, yet all the actors wear masks. They are disturbing visages - lopsided smiles and loopy frowns. Sad denouements and maddened resolutions. When the curtain falls, it melts until the orchestra is stained. The conductor falls into the pit. And the pit has teeth. And the screams. God, the screams. They sound like my father after he came back from a rambunctious row of tequila shots and Moscow mules. They sound like my mother after finding ym diary detailing all my girl crushes. They sound like my brother in his spiral, demanding money from an alcoholic and howling when all he got was copper instead of green paper. I will dull these screams with earplugs, and with music - if only the music didn't swell like a poisoned ocean, full of severed heads and bugged

Raymond's cat, Murphy, was incredibly fluffy and incredibly vocal. He was the epitome of a ragdoll cat, and his blue eyes seemed to stare directly into your soul and then out of it just as easily. As I sat on the couch, eating spicy cheese puffs and drinking a can of ginger ale, Murphy curled up next to me, finally content with whom he had decided was a suitable caretaker while his owner was on a business trip in Dallas.