My Cardboard Balcony

The Suite by Belinda Roddie when the conductor lowered bones from arching blades gears slowing to a cricket creak the denouement of hushed reeds and whistling wind from a horned lip was met with blessed silence and programmed anticipation.

As she plotted out the architecture in blue and white prints, Rosanna was beginning to feel the onset of preliminary exhaustion in her muscles. She leaned back from her desk, shoulder blades squealing in protest as they rubbed against the cushion of her swivel chair. The mayor wanted the plans for the new city hall by tomorrow. Rosanna was beginning to wonder if she could ever get it done.

Steel by Belinda Roddie Tin and aluminum folds, compresses into coils and worms, squeezed into cylinders, manufactured for the great consumer. Iron turns red and grows rusty even while enduring sun and storm and sleet, while the fences fray away. But steel is the color of the uniforms that streak across the chrome sky where all the cold marrow is sucked out of bone. We do not wish to fight with steel. We merely wish to build with steel. And until these towers are not toppled, even though we do not like it, we salute the men in steel, salute them fighting, salute them dying. In Memoriam.

I was thinking up a rather snide dilemma for the two-year-old chihuahua that was crying from its window just two houses down from me. My husband told me not to mess with the poor puppy, but when it was yapping like its ears were on fire, I just couldn't help but draft a plan to shut it up by forcing cookies down its throat, but that solution would serve only to be temporary. So as much as I tried to be evil, I just couldn't manage it, so I pet my big labrador and slept with my red head upon his back.

As the old man transformed into a dashing blond youth right in front of our eyes, I gaped at the flower which honeysuckle had re-nourished the blood and rejuvenated the bones. No more deep, vicious wrinkles, replaced by ruddy, puckering lips and pink flesh. Stubble dotted the clean jaw where the white wisps used to be. And as the cane fell from the man's hand, he danced and skipped as if he had been given the energy of a jackrabbit.

by Belinda Roddie The dingo licked its chops. Baby back ribs were on the menu. But that was the way it always was on Driftwood Avenue on the Australian deadlands. Dingos ate the children of everyone who lived out there for longer than ten years. Especially the fat ones. This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.

Grandmother always liked to rant about how the bad tap water in our town had stunted my growth. Given that I stood at a meager 4'10" at the age of twenty-nine, I understood why she'd have a conspiracy theory. But the truth was, it was just the way I grew. And it always made it fun when I challenged my thirty-two-year-old husband to a game of hide and seek. I always won. Hiding under the stairwell.