My Cardboard Balcony

Sissy by Belinda Roddie Hey, dreary, weary, top-heavy, bottom-swollen sissy boy, let's play pogo stick with your ego and wait to see your manhood quake between your twig thighs like a loose splinter. Let's take off your shirt and expose the fleshy rivulets up and down your caved in waistline. Trace the cracks and fissures like we're reading a dead palm. Curve our fingers against the knobbly Adam's apple until we can stroke the boyish stubble while we giggle, giggle, pretending we want to kiss you when all we want to do is prod you like sad, soggy, chemical-soaked clay. Don't cry. Crying's for sissies. Didn't your daddy tell you that over exoskeletons caught in amber melting into a V-neck, unsnapping the eel from the salty hip and cutting an X below your jaw? Because when you cry, we lick the hot lava from your charred face, watching you tumble, tumble, tumble against our hands and wrap your arms around yourself three times to...

"So are you gay, or are you straight?" "Both." Sara blinks. "So you're bisexual?" "I just love people. Okay?" "No, no, no. Hear me out." She takes a sip from her smoothie. "There, that's better. So you like guys, and you like girls." "I just love people." "So you're bi." "I don't have to be anything!"

"I object!" "This isn't a courtroom, Mom." "I still object," snapped Cynthia. "I object to all of it. Your career choice, your choice of partner, everything." "Okay, Mom," muttered Alex. "May I ask why?" "Because you are throwing out everything we've worked so hard to give you!" she cried. "Your education, your benefits...all gone!" I sighed and stirred my coffee.

by Belinda Roddie "Hey, you stole that line from a musical!" "No, I didn't!" "You totally did! I know it! I've seen the show on Broadway!" "You're a liar!" "Are not!" "Are, too!" "See, this is what happens when we let them try to write music together," Mark said glumly as he watched our daughters squabble. "They don't have to follow in our footsteps, you know." They wanted to, though. Mark and I had been a dynamic musical duo for twenty years of our lives. When we had decided to have children, our careers were put on hold. Jessica and Allison, as a result, wanted to write music and basically continue the trend like it was a family tradition. They were thirteen and eleven respectively, squabbling over who got to play what instrument or who got to sing what song. Today, the argument was about lyrics. The amount of music they had written? Pretty negotiable. Close to none, th...

I was ready to cook a seven course meal, that was how hungry I was. But when my friends showed up at my house, I made grilled cheese with bacon and tomato soup for all of us. Not that we minded, of course - we enjoyed the meal with pretty hefty bottles of beer. "So when's the new girlfriend coming over?" Arthur asked me with a mouthful of cheddar. "I don't know. Tomorrow?" "You haven't asked?" I blushed. "I'm still a little nervous around her." "But she said she loves you!" "I know. It's hard to believe."

So. I won National Novel Writing Month. No, I don't get a prize. No, I don't get money. I just get the pride of knowing that after trying four times, I finally, finally reached the 50,000 word goal for the month of November. It's kind of funny that I'm celebrating so much, especially after I finished a novel that was more than 75,000 words long in eight days. But it's still worth a lot to me to be able to face a deadline head-on and make it. Yes, I did get to the word count exactly on the last day of November, but it was pretty much purposeful. I wanted to pace myself out as much as possible, given my workload and the fact that I spend about 45 hours a week at a school where I obviously can't spend my time writing. The novel's not finished, and it's still untitled, but there's only one chapter left (each chapter is named after a month in time in the story, so the last one is "June"). I'm really looking forward to wrapping it up an...

Illuminae by Belinda Roddie Stranger in the illuminae Singing a father’s lullaby Under a glorious Neptune sky The fireflies dim their glow to cry Drinking from an oaken bowl While lying on a velvet knoll And the stars so high above him roll Like wheels in cosmos dark as coal Stranger in the illuminae Doesn’t know where he is and why Caught in the view of a swallow’s eye That gently glides over the cold hillside He sleeps, while the spirit of the air keeps His body warm Tomorrow it will send him home The work you see here has not been edited nor altered since July 23rd, 2007.