My Cardboard Balcony

Was I Smiling? by Belinda Roddie Sluggish Sunday crepuscule, when the moon was supersized like a triple cheeseburger, sesame seed craters all along its sirloin face - and we drifted along the park like hang-gliders, fists intertwined so our knuckles became cushions - was I smiling, then? Did I enjoy your faded features against the glaring light of the dystopia, blurring fast against neon stares behind firefly spectacles, the prism rims lighting up again and again and again until they sparkled with an addicting two-dimensional vigor? Because if I did not smile, I was thinking of smiling, if only to see the sun rise on your fiery eyebrows, the singed residue of yesternight still glinting like embers on your lips, the cinders cascading from your shoulders, with the ash of our adventure painted across our cheeks and making us cough from smoked ecstasy.

They said it was a day in which I should be particularly joyous - but too many things were chafing at me, exposing the raw, blistered part of my brain that was moderately used for dreaming. Yes, the rainbow flags were billowing this morning in California, but in Greece, the camps were set up, and the smog from the adjacent cities were blowing in to paint dust on the tear-stained faces of citizens who simply wanted a body that fit them.

What Did You Expect? by Belinda Roddie You promised insanity, ignoring the adolescent strings of profanity, enjoying profit while forsaking humanity - enduring onslaughts of complaints so you could plan a date to your third estate because you wanted immortality, but you're so bleached with your illusion that reality is pushed away. You think you're God. In actuality, you know the truth; you see it in the eyes of youth drinking from the meager metaphorical soup. You. Are getting. Older. And grayer. And colder. Your bones and muscles ain't the way they used to be. Your heart won't beat the way it did during infancy. You'll be a raspy motherfucker with a bowel issue. You'll cry to nurses for morphine and a box of extra tissues, and when you realize that the hospital is echoing, you'll understand that while you claimed to be king, you ruined everything. You sucked away my future through a straw - I had to pay for happiness. You...

Cecily eagerly blamed me for the splintering of her son Todd's bone, and I even more eagerly denied it. It was common knowledge in the household that Todd was a giant, six-foot-tall, sixteen-year-old klutz - and his recent tumble down the stairs was indicative of it. But Cecily was convinced that I had pushed him. "Why would I do that?" I demanded. "I like Todd."

¿Estás Borracha? by Belinda Roddie "¿Estás borracha?" a bus-goer asked me plaintively more than skeptically as I dripped mucus across his armrest, dangerously close to staining the sleeve of his Giants jacket. I promptly forgot how to reply in his preferred language, so I laughed and sprayed a non-verbal negative response to his question that I'm fairly certain he didn't quite fathom. Disgusted, he looked at who must have been his wife, cradling their five-to-six-year-old daughter in her arms. She had the orange "SF" stamped on her cheek, the proper temporary tattoo demonstrating an imposed, juvenile enthusiasm for a game with balls and sticks either in a man's hands or between his legs. And I chuckled. And I spat some more. And it wasn't until I was off the bus and halfway down Valencia that I came up with a response that I so wished I could have yanked from my soaked cerebrum sooner. "No, no estoy borracha. Sólo estoy c...

It was growing exceedingly difficult for Ms. Stein to write letters to her grandson, for the arthritis in her right hand caused the entire body of tissue beneath her knuckles and skin to flare up so it was like someone was branding her arm with an iron similar to searing the flesh off of a cow. But she insisted on writing letters - she loved her penmanship, and she sincerely loathed computers. Nasty metal things, eating up money and time.

"Is that girl walking on stilts?" "No, dude. She's just really tall." "...That tall?" "Yeah." "Like, how tall is that, anyway?" "I don't know. Six feet? Six foot one?" "Dude." "Easy, man. It's no biggie." "Dude, she's taller than me!" "And is that a problem?" the girl asked as she sidled past us in the line, the smell of fast food cheeseburgers lingering on her employee uniform.