My Cardboard Balcony

No OneWord today. Site didn't get updated. Hopefully I'll have something for y'all tomorrow.

by Belinda Roddie Jeffy picked the nose of the bust of Abraham Lincoln, which opened a secret door in Grandma's study. He had always had a strange inclination to do something wacky like that - in fact, when he had visited the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. back when he was six, he had wished greatly to pick the nose of the giant statue, similar to a particularly fun episode of Ren and Stimpy. For a long time, Grandma had kept a bust of Van Buren, mostly because she found his mutton chops to be, sarcastically, endearing. But after Jeffy's pleas to see Honest Abe's nasal cavity violated, his granny was eager to oblige. The young boy had known about his grandma's study since he was seven, when he had seen her disappear seemingly into the wall of the small room where she kept what he called a decoy library. Her study had taller shelves of copious volumes and tomes, most of them beautifully bound, swirling in a spiral formation around her desk. Jeffy shuffled over t...

The sergeant suffered a strange fatigue what flatlining on a field of tundra death, with tumbleweeds encircling carcasses that decomposed, and flowers popped up all around the lonely bodies. Dandelions in eye sockets, a golden poppy nestled in a nostril, and al the pink and white carnations bursting from a ribcage, petals blooming from each gap of bone and life and breath and humanity.

So, I'm kind of tired of going over every hardship in my workplace (it has gotten better, though), or delving too deeply into my latest test-taking (looks like I passed the CBEST - yay!), so I'ma just gonna talk about a crisis I have that is significantly more frivolous. I have normally been very good with titles. Hell, sometimes I create stories based on titles I scrounge up. The Sequined Door came very quickly for me title-wise, and my poems usually start with a title and go from there. But for the life of me, I cannot - cannot - think of a title for my latest novel. I've just finished reading it aloud to a friend and have edited it frequently. No matter what, no one seems to be able to find a title for it. The premise is simple enough - it follows particular tropes, but my colleagues claim it's a strong character piece. And yet every title I think of is either cheesy, vague, too formal, or just weak. My sister keeps jokingly insisting that I should call it, ...

Ready, Aim, Desire by Belinda Roddie He’s in love. Pulling on his heavy gloves, he lets his fingers trace the outline, massage the long, dark neck. That elegant neck, which gives such shine, seductive in her look and touch, can make him shudder as he holds her, but though she can be rough, she steeps all lovers in a slow and easy sleep.   He’s in love. He’ll have no other, wants no other. He’ll take his lady to the woods and let her spit a vicious, but lusty fire from her lips – she kisses their heads, paints their bodies red. And then, he peruses his fallen prey before returning to the quiet thrill of caressing, kissing that long, dark neck. though she may become the Black Widow that so many fear, through the years he hasn’t fallen in love with the kill, but the murderer forever bent to his wil The work you see here has not been edited not altered since December 19th, 2007.

"She did it! She willed me to do it!" "She what?" "She willed me to do it!" "...I'm sorry, let me make sure I'm clear on this. She willed you to get drunk." "Yeah." "Willed you to pull down her pants." "Yes." "Willed you to have your way with her." "YES." "And willed you to make her feel extremely depressed and frightened, which prompted her to try to kill herself about six hours later after you had violated her?" "...She tried to...?"

Ben Valentine Was Dead by Belinda Roddie Ben Valentine was dead by overdose of chocolate, boxes littered around his small apartment bedroom. The neighbors thought his girlfriend would be seeing him, but as she had broken up with him forty-eight hours prior, and he could not afford a bottle of strong whiskey, he decided to abuse his blatant diabetes. Poor Ben. They did not want him to succumb to shock, but as it were, he died without so much as a request for elegy or epitaph - he had not had so much of a significant life outside his small complex. But to neighbors, he'd be missed.