My Cardboard Balcony

Soulsplosion by Belinda Roddie Oh, God, it's everywhere - neon splatters on the walls - tattoos of past hopes on a chair leg's splintered flesh - rainbow skidmarks from fleeing the scene too fast - too fast - too fast - I am incapable of stopping the eruption of volcanic emotions from my opened chest - I am hopeless to stop it. Fucking. Hopeless. When will I stop breathing ash without ever touching a cigarette? When will the tears I cry stop scalding my skin as they steam along the sides of my nose? I am hot, I am cold, I can burn bridges and freeze hearts. I am a bunsen burner out of control. I am chemicals in a closed vial, waiting to eat through the glass in a vibrant, colorful geyser that leaves nothing but a mess and a miasma of spite in the laboratory. Seratonin and dopamine and love and promises with just a hint of something strong in my system. Take off that coat, doctor, it's not white anymore. Lock the doors behind you and leave me th...

"You've grown confident," remarked Allison. "Too confident. There are some things you can do, sir, but they are not exactly well-defined or honed. You are an amateur at many things and an expert at none. It's all well and good to dabble, to inform yourself, on history, mathematics, the arts. But trivia doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things when the only skill you actually have is bragging about the little that you know."

Abstract Art by Belinda Roddie You stand before the locked gate, your tapestry flowing from your shoulders, swathed in pastels and pretentious shades. You have a clock for a face, yet you cannot tell time to save your life. Many months ago, your hands spun out of control, and you were lost in ticks and tocks and Roman numerals lined up in a row. The circumference of your character is not so well-rounded after all, and so, you are denied access to the surrealist emporium, the estate closed off to you, Dalí standing at the door and giving you the finger. But that doesn't matter, since after all, you were created to represent Whitman, and his corporeal desires, like electricity, course through both his veins and yours, causing the fabric enclosing your silhouette to glitter with fire. You have a soul, even though it is burning slowly now, and you open your mouth to sing, but all you do is chime the hour. The wrong hour.

I came from a large family living in a rural area, without much to offer besides farms, a couple of bars, and endless gray, cracked miles of road. By the time I turned eighteen, I had bought a ticket to San Francisco, and I was moving in with my girlfriend. I was young and reckless, as any other eighteen-year-old would be, and excited to be somewhere urban, but as soon as I stepped off the plane with my suitcase squeaking behind me, I could feel my rustic heart creaking with anxiety.

The Choir Of Angels by Belinda Roddie They just let David Bowie in here, and the air is a little sweeter from the music. It mingles with Mozart and Beethoven, Fitzgerald and Sinatra, Lennon and Cobain. We listen to their warbling, their crooning, their harmonies and dissonances, all while eating bread and drinking wine, the crust dry and crisp, the aftertaste lingering like a long lost friend. We see you clustered around your screens and mirrors, seeking something beyond the glare of white and the judgment of the glass. What awaits you is a simplicity that you may find difficult to digest. We, too, needed time to shed the heavy garments of human priorities. It was the view from Heaven that soothed our sore bones, before they disintegrated into clouds, and the symphony - crafted from ebony keys, fraying bows, hearts afraid of mortality - played on.

THIS IS NOT THE END, BUT THE BEGINNING, spoke SCIMITAR. I AM THE HARBINGER OF GOOD NEWS AND BAD. I REMAIN NEUTRAL AS THE TIDE TURNS IN ANOTHER'S FAVOR. DO NOT FEAR ME. I SPEAK ONLY THE TRUTH. "This is not the end, but the beginning?" repeated Shawster, furrowing her brow. "I designed this damn computer! Why is it being so cryptic?"

"So if you add those two numbers, Uma, what's the sum?" asked Mrs. Ranshaw, her nose looking especially long and pointy in the sparse light of the classroom. The petite, red-haired Russian girl stared at her worksheet. To her, it was gibberish. She blinked, then looked up. "What is sum?" "Total," coaxed Mrs. Ranshaw, knowing full well of Uma's difficulty with the subject. Some of the students snickered. "The total amount, Uma."