My Cardboard Balcony

My White Kettle by Belinda Roddie My white kettle never brewed tea, didn't like water and never loved me.

It was the cat's meow. The bee's knees. The hip of hooch in a zoot suit's steps. Andre had never been happier to have prom be nineteen twenties themed. He dressed in his best suit and learned the Charleston. He walked in hoping to snag a flapper girl. He had gone stag, obviously, as his date was not exactly a fan of Great Gatsby. She'd have to learn, old sport. She'd have to learn.

How can one unwrite a note and make it unwritten? How can one unride a bicycle, or unread a book, or undigest a pizza that you shouldn't have gotten with all those extra toppings because the Italian sausage alone added two extra bucks to your order and you really should have just ordered the breadsticks because they're super cheesy good? You can't. And I fucking loved that pizza, so shut it.

by Belinda Roddie Every razor blade hidden behind the bathroom mirror told a story, and it helped that they had been collected from several different people. Some blades held the wear and tear of daily or nightly shaving, from the jawline to the thigh, with few nicks in between. Others, surprisingly, were adequately honed and sharp. Something Sweeney Todd could use to slice up human hor d'oeuvres before the main meat pastry entree. Jules worked as a psychiatrist in the main ward of Helm Hospital, and she had taken the time to pick out each razor, tag them, and slip them behind the mirror where her husband wouldn't notice. Raoul was a desperately paranoid man, and for one reason or another, he was always worried that Jules, in the long run, wasn't as conventionally happy with her life as he had hoped. One look at the collection of pointy metal slicers, and he would most likely have gone into cardiac arrest after beginning a tirade on how life was so worth living to his m...

There were six doors in the entire house, but they all led to the same core room: The Zone Room. It didn't matter if you were waltzing out in a bathrobe with toothpaste still stuck to your lower lip. It didn't matter if you had just finished scrubbing a stubborn spot of egg yolk off a tarnished frying pan. It didn't matter if you had just had the best sex of your life, cleaned up, and gone out for a bottle of wine or a pack of cigarettes. You always wound up in the Zone Room. And it was a good thing.

It's been a much better week. Mostly because my cousin, who I hadn't seen in seven years, is here to visit. We've done a lot of cool stuff together, and it's been refreshing to be with family and relations. I'm taking everything in stride, though planning out my future does get to me a lot. My apathy/depression/whatever you want to call it has subsided a bit, though I am remaining vigilant. It's just nice to feel passionate about stuff again. It feels great. And yes, I have written a wee bit for my new novel, so it will happen. Just once I'm no longer entertaining relatives (which I enjoy doing, by the way), I'll have more time to really concentrate on getting this done. I'm looking forward to writing this. I'm looking forward to a lot of things coming up in my life. Writer's Quotation of the Night: Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death. - Edna Ferber H...

Eight Ball by Belinda Roddie He plays pool in a crowded billiard room. There are cobwebs in his hair. There is dust dancing on his lips. The sign outside the building reads “Condemned.” It is surrounded by barbed wire and steel fences. One sneering watcher offers him a cigarette. He lights it and aims for the corner pocket. The eight ball bounces. It always bounces back to him. Those who watch laugh and bear their teeth. They do not see that he is grinning too. They do not hear the crack of his pool cue against the felt that’s faded from green to gray. They do not smell the smoke from his cigarette. They do not taste the dust in the stifling air. They feel nothing. All they do is laugh. The broken noose still hangs limply around his neck. He cannot remove it. He aims for the corner pocket. The eight ball bounces. It will always bounce back to him. The game will never end. Some day in this eternity, he will learn not to care. The work you see here was written in the fall of 2009. I...