My Cardboard Balcony

Big changes all around. Not sure how to put it all into words. It was a good week, overall, but it definitely was an overwhelming one. So I'm gonna leave it at that. Have a great night and a great weekend, everyone.

Conversation Over A Bloody Mary by Belinda Roddie "Hell could be worse," commented Chad. "It could be Florida."

The bartender filled my glass half full with bourbon before letting the apple juice cover it. It was murky like Los Angeles smog, but more fit to drink and easier on the stomach. I watched as she sprinkled cinnamon on top, too. It was called a Broken Leg, she said. I smirked at the idea of offering someone a Broken Leg. Hell, that was tempting, come to think of it, given my current mood and the way the burly men, the ones with curly hair and leather jackets sitting at the corner table, kept leering at me.

This Concrete Jungle by Belinda Roddie This concrete jungle is too harsh and cold for me to stay here, stewing over bad coffee, old newspapers, a crumbling scone, counting all the ulcers I've had this week on one hand. I'm as skeletal as my aged car, pathetic, rusted in the lot, waiting for me to take it wheezing back home so I can watch cable until I can no longer keep my eyes open. When I leave the coffee shop, I drop a dime into a panhandler's cup. He's pissed that I didn't leave him more. I'm ready to plant my shoe in his teeth, but then I find myself remembering God's jaundiced eye.

The projector in the classroom was broken, so I couldn't show the movie like I wanted to. Instead, I had the students bust out the smartphones and cameras and see if they could make their own movies. What started as individual tomfoolery, to my initial shock and my resulting admiration, turned into a class-wide act of cooperation. At first, students just wanted to make their own single goofy videos. Now, they wanted to create an entire group production.

Hyde, One AM by Belinda Roddie I'm sneaking sips from a mini bottle of Jameson at the bus stop with the best view of the bridge. Its metal snout breathes in fog and breathes out light and heat and bubbling stars. I think the whiskey's gone to my head, because I have the strange belief that behind me, the streets are being repaved with silver, and all the divots in the sidewalks are being filled with diamonds, like a ritzy operation on a broken nasal cavity. And all I want to do is curl up on a mattress where the sun hits me just right, but bird shit can't touch me, out where the silhouette of a brass arrow buries its nose deep into the drought-choked soil, and the rattling of repainted cable cars is the best free alarm clock I could ever ask for, and deep in the stew of my memory, I can see dinner for two at the wharf where sea lions sing harsh lullabies, and smell hot coffee and burnt sugar, and hear Irish reels telling me run away run away run...

The ward was sealed off from guests, which meant today, I would be alone in my room again. The judge had not come this morning like she had promised, to properly analyze and interview me, to see if I could finally get out of this hellhole. I was left with nurses with stiff white collars and rigid trays of multicolored pills that I was expected to swallow dry. The least they could have done was provide me some water. Maybe a shot of whiskey.