My Cardboard Balcony

I Tasted Onions And Dill by Belinda Roddie I tasted onions and dill when I kissed her, the white walls of the diner closing in around us. I took her back to my apartment so we could watch a brand new episode of her favorite sitcom while eating homemade nachos laden with fresh salsa, guacamole, and pinto beans. It wasn't dramatic; it was simple. It was divine, however, at the same time. I was thrilled by the way we both were straightforward: Me with a gut, her with a scraggly hairdo, us both with a mighty appetite. I adored the flavor of her lips - the taste of matter-of-fact love.

Sentenced to an unquantified number of years in a small penthouse with no windows, no doors, and a flatscreen television with all of the voices playing outside her head. She cradled her own rolled up blanket like something from an unyielding womb was nestled inside it - the child she had not wanted, could never want, and would get rid of because she didn't want it. But in this world, it was murder. Sacrilege. Dishonor.

Cider Shack Budget by Belinda Roddie The utility bill at the O'Connell Cider Shack is just obscene - but that's what happens when you devote your Irish pride to serving cold, crisp pome nectar to the post-famine-obsessed full-bloods. Doesn't help when your best customer's a Shannon mayor who dreams of owning the Guinness Factory. Still, it's rejuvenating to see stark faces over chip-laden plates, the hot spice of a Celtic Tiger day, the raw smell of body odor mixed with stout and cream - and the good old iced half pint of Tipperary's fertility, chilled to perfection, to be sipped through one corner of the mouth while smoking a cigarette in the other corner. Life's a bitch, but at least you can drink.

"Knock, knock!" "No, Charlie." "Oh, c'mon. Knock, knock." "...who's there?" "Tom!" "Tom who?" "Tom from high school chemistry class! I want to have wild, passionate sex with you!" "...Um." "No, seriously, he said that. On Facebook and everything." "...What." "Yeah, Sammy! He did! You want I should speak with him?" "No, I want I should kill him."

Stew by Belinda Roddie Little bit of unnecessary drama on rice, needles in spice, oh so nice to be a stew, boiling and brewing, sitting and spewing, growing cold in a dead man's maw.

She cut her hand open and it kept bleeding oil. It bled and bled until a fountain was bursting. A tycoon rolled back in a stained Rolls Royce and said, "Hey, that's a mighty fine oil well right there. Human, too. Glorious stuff. To keep that going, how much can I pay to own you and get billions?" With the unctuous stuff still leaking, she flipped him off.

When the Sun Melts by Belinda Roddie when the sun melts into the butter tin, you know it's time to bring out the ancient waffle iron - the one you got from your grandfather who told stories about fairies in his own backyard. growing in tufts, no less, like pixie weeds, on a stardust midnight. when you stir in the flare just enough, you might just catch the syrupy sweetness of a Moher morning, when the sugar finally precedes the salt, and you're left with a banjo player for a husband and an accordion extraordinaire for a son, and they're both raring to go for Irish breakfast with beans, when all you want is the old-fashioned fluff - puffed from worrying, fanned out by history, sweetened by time.