My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie Holy shit, you're terrifying. You drink smoke. You breathe fire. You stomp on castles until they're as fine as baking powder. You eat children. You snort cocaine. You find ways to make every mother in the village sad. You make their sons useless. They can't go to work this way. They're morons. And morons can't even lift, bro. You destroy chimneys. You rest at midnight. You opt for LSD in the dead of dawn. Once you're tripping, you rampage through Tokyo, just like Godzilla. The Japanese just wanna catch a break, man. They've been through enough. So has the Middle East. You scare me, bro. You break glass. You ruin churches. You make priests cry. You often hope for an apocalypse. When you don't get one, you throw a tantrum. It causes earthquakes. It flattens houses. It freaks out children. The children you haven't eaten. It panics parents. It creates tension. You are alone. You are lonely. And you frighten me. Stop frightenin

The water was crisp and cool, and I drank as much as I could before my stomach ached. Then, I lay across the flat stone beneath me, letting the wind settle like an invisible blanket against my knees and chest. It was just another lukewarm autumn day at the family cabin, and from what I could tell, my family was inside, playing board games and listening to records. My brother was blackberry picking, and my kid sister was catching waterdogs along the creek.