My Cardboard Balcony

The white rose had withered a long time ago, but Delilah had not removed it from the slender swan-necked vase. So the petals crackled and crinkled and wrinkled until they snapped off the graying steam, drifting downward with the color and texture of old autumn leaves, dusting the tablecloth with feverish spring dreams. Delilah sat in her chair and watched the flower die, sniffing loudly before returning to her book.

by Belinda Roddie Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, things just work out a certain way. In this case, Emily and I went our separate ways almost nonchalantly. It wasn't as if something was broken, or torn, like a china plate or a shirt. It simply ended - like a car being placed in park after a long drive, or the faucet turning off after streaming hot water and soaking into my hair. Six years went away like our lease on the townhouse, like our shared groceries, like the split utility bills. I was sent on my way, and Emily? Well, Natalie was waiting for her, nestled in the driver's seat of her van, being a good "friend." I knew that people would view my reaction as cold-hearted, like I wanted this to happen. Of course I didn't want what I considered to be a solid relationship to wrap up, but really, that was the only adjective that could be used to describe our relationship: Solid. Like a big, bulky brick in a building. Solid, but cracked and gray and staine...

It was considerably rough terrain, and Arvey was already beginning to feel her energy slide away from her like fat off a bone. She dropped to one knee in order to redo the laces on her right boot, the wind brushing against her hair and causing a shudder to run down from her scalp to the tail end of her back. She watched as Mistress Kor stopped a few meters ahead of her, looking over the lip of the hill.

Tonight's introspection is being typed up a little earlier than most Fridays. Hell, usually I'm scraping close to midnight with these things. But tonight is different - mostly because I need to be in bed by, at the latest, 10:00. I will be driving up to Windsor in order to take all four English subtests of the CSET. Obviously, the mistake here was taking them all in the same day. This was clearly done two months back because I thought I would be rushing to get teaching credential applications in. This ultimately did not end up happening, but I kept the CSET on the date I got it for because, honestly, the next time scheduled was pretty far off. So, instead of taking maybe two subtests for one day, I'm taking all four. I'm obviously privy to making mistakes. Dropping the ball, stepping in it, and, to put it more bluntly, fucking up are fairly common in my life. In this case, I waited until a week before the test before actually looking at what I had to study. I guess,...

How Jimmy the Driver Became Jimmy the Rat by Belinda Roddie It was midnight outside the tiny Italian restaurant, and Jimmy decided to light a cigarette as he parked the fancy black Mercedes comfortably in three parking spaces. Rolling the windows down, he belched out smoke in dark gray plumes in the foggy air, the cold of San Francisco creeping into the seats and chilling his shoulders hidden beneath his jacket. At this rate, Madison wouldn't be out for another half hour, but that was to be expected. Jimmy prided himself on his ability to puff out smoke rings, but if there was one thing that he was particularly bad at, it was driving. Therefore, it was amazing that he had a job as a driver to begin with. He failed at all the rudimentary steps of proper road etiquette:   He screamed at passerby, refused to use his blinkers, and oftentimes ran lights because he claimed the system was just trying to fuck with him.   On occasion he would be pulled over, but he managed to avo...

I like the way you smile with your upper lip curled slightly. Also, I like ice cream. But I especially like the way you smile with your upper lip curled slightly, even as you're eating ice cream. You get mint chip all the time, a staple in that little corner shop between the gas station and the thrift store. And the green dairy just stains your teeth, and the chocolate speckles your gums perfectly, as you grin with a mouthful of sugar cone.

The Scantron Is Your Enemy by Belinda Roddie The scantron is your enemy - a strange draconian form of artificial search for knowledge through the faulty process of elimination for some pseudo-self- evaluation. We learn through the art of self-discovery, of building new ideas to improve the people and the world in which they live. Don't tell me that wisdom has benchmarks or only one cheap answer out of five guesses (A or E?). If brains all worked like number two pencils darkening dots, we all would fall apart. I'll stuff these tests through the shredder. I still won't degrade brilliance. I never will.