My Cardboard Balcony

I Wish by Belinda Roddie "I wish I were as brave as you," she whispered to my sweater sleeve, the wool scratching a streaming nose, the fireside biting at our feet. "You will be," I breathed into her hair, and I tossed an arm forward and caught her heart before it fell in the form of salt. "I promise."

The film's director went outside to answer questions from some of her frostbitten fans, who had hovered around the corners of the movie theater just dying to see her face. She had done something truly remarkable with cinema - something an old rival found disconcerting. "There's a reason why women have only one Best Director Oscar to their name," he scowled over a glass of Tullamore Dew. "Because they don't get the film world. So why do they care about her so much?" "Nice one, asshole," grunted the bartender.

Merciful Highlander by Belinda Roddie When the spoon hits the back of the palate just right, it tingles something extraordinary, and the lamb lingers on the spice spectrum just perfectly. The Scotsman tries a new song out on a younger lady who spins glass behind the barber shop, her hands hot and sticky from the outpouring of color in steaming streams. He wants to impress her and take her to Edinburgh, where the rain accompanies a chorus against the high grass and dark trees, and the stout is poured thick and frothy from the tap down the old boy's throat. And every time a stranger walks in from Inverness, there's a little skip beneath his right shoe, and the pillar displaying the preconceived end of the world leads to a pub where the stew is offered as hot as the Guinness is provided cold. And the Scot eats the stew, and it lingers perfectly.

Tales of the Grizzly Cat! And oh, what tales they are. The puma's eerie scream against the bristly fields of corn. The Grizzly Cat stalks lovers, yes, when they are pigeon-holed among large haystacks, sucking straw while kissing with strings of seasoned saliva. The Grizzy Cat was shafted, you see, but a similarly grizzly lover. And the lover had more claws!

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.