My Cardboard Balcony

She Said It Was A Smile by Belinda Roddie She said it was a smile caught in the rain when she presented the drawing that I had instructed her to work on that day in the stifling eighty degree classroom. I had told ten girls to draw whatever first popped into their minds after closing their eyes. At first, this student's paper was nothing but Jackson Pollock-esque squiggly lines, and that was all she could at first call them. But then we drew together - number eights with smiley faces that we called friends, a snake singing "S" that I concocted in my mind. So her picture soon became two eyes, and a smile that held in the rain.

I broke down the timeline of the night's events again to Stewart, just as the ice was being to melt into fresh globs against his still apparently aching brow. Obviously, step one to the entire process had been to crack open our neighbors' most expensive bottle of tequila. "And Rodrigo didn't mind?" "Not at all. He hates agave. His cousin gave it to him." After that, it has all been confetti and insanity.

U.S.ED by Belinda Roddie America's school system does not exemplify, nor provide, education. Let me explain. Education, as a concept, is, at a surface level, the ability to cognitively identify and explore the things we see, while expanding our minds  outward toward the things we do not know. Our minds, of course, are naturally built not only to solve problems, but also to create personal and/or widespread innovations and revolutions that challenge the established rules that we already have - not simply in our material environments, but also in our conscious and subconscious proceedings. (Rules, by the way, are not made to be followed or improved upon. They are made to be questioned, torn down, rewritten, and questioned again.) Education is, on a deeper level, the principle of breaking habits. Of noticing more than a dirty coin's two sides. It is the way to seeing the fourth dimension, beyond the stilted view of our human eyes. It ...

The whole galaxy seemed to dissolve into a tall, clear glass, swimming cosmos waiting to be imbibed by the one who had poured the stardust from the bottle. One swish baked the cocktail in an angry burst of energy, and when swallowed, it caused fireworks within the cavernous belly, rumbled, and then was silent. The rotation of the axis was all it took to get the drinker's head spinning.

Charles Zenkin by Belinda Roddie She poured the noir whiplash across a chipped chalice, and she let it settle into froth before serving it to the master of the house - Charles Zenkin, third heir of the insignificant fortune of his intoxicated forefathers, though he liked to brag that his alcoholic pleasures were much more "refined." "Charlotte," he murmured with wet lips, and her name was, indeed, Charlotte, as it sounded so charming with his own title - he wouldn't have married a Maureen. "You seem so small, in the corner of this green room." And so she was. The minuscule grass blade reminder of juvenile flings, ice cream parlor prayers over half-melted malts as Charles became twelve-year-old, buck-toothed Chuck. Lopsided crescent moon below his brow, pot belly strained beneath his stained school uniform, and the girl with brown curls stood tiptoe to kiss him on his sour cheek, long before the fumes of faux wealth and happin...

"I'm telling you, hilarity will ensue. I mean, think about it. We get the paint. We get the confetti. Then one big, fat roll of duct tape, and then..." "Hold it, hold it, hold it." I held up both hands before Haley could go on. "Let me digest this. Hilarity will ensue for us, or for everyone involved?" Haley raised an eyebrow. "Since when were we caring about the prank victims?" "Since I had a soul. I dunno. C'mon."

Sharpie Mustache by Belinda Roddie It wasn't an Adolf Hitler approach, nor a vague attempt at an even vaguer Salvador Dalí (we'd need the drooping pocket watch to bring out the full effect, especially with our buddy seeming to melt himself on the hand-me-down couch). It was, merely, a bittersweet attempt at the debonair top hat slouch riding solo in a drunken horseless carriage, the English air billowing between his inked lips, the crooked smile accomplished by the crumbs of combo pizza stuck behind the molars, the nostrils flared from the burn of Tennessee honey still conversing with his small intestine. The black marker goatee was a plus.