My Cardboard Balcony

Mope O'Clock by Belinda Roddie Every time of day, I feel like crashing in the corner of my lip-drooping, eye-sagging pity party where there's no piñata, just some bottles of cold rum and even colder Kahlua. Don't try to lift me from this sour mood, as unhealthy as candy, because my heart is puckering around the edges, and I feel a figurative baseball bat strike me against the chest over and over and try to tear my intestines apart so children can feast on the last crumbs of my sugary past success.

After the reconstruction of the city hall, the entire council convened in the brand new chambers, where Councilwoman Laura Shieldman cracked open a bottle of sparkling cider and passed around full paper cups for all to enjoy. "No champagne?" her fellow councilman, Jamie Ottoman, jokingly asked, sipping from his new cheap chalice. "Not in this town," Laura reminded him. "Remember the die-hard Christians?"

Hiccup Brew by Belinda Roddie August was deceivingly short, so when September swept in wearing slippers, I took it upon myself to visit every pub in the autumn and savor a draft from a frosted glass every day. It was around the beginning of the leaves' descent that I found a friend with a chronic case of hiccups, which gave his words a rhythm like no other, and I could pound out an accompaniment with my fists on the bar table as the other patrons, and the bartender, listened in. I asked him,  "Do you do anything to fix your hiccups? Like,  what's the doctor's orders?" And he smiled and said, "Doctor's-mm-orders? Mm-no. I-mm-enjoy-mm-my little ditty." And so he did, because he was his own little record player, with the needle skipping once in a while, in always that mm-mm-mm murmur, swilling brew so the bubbles crackled with the curve of his throat.

"He's very timid, isn't he?" We watched him by the window, seeing how he kept to himself in the corner of the daycare center. A small, pink stuffed dinosaur lay on its back beside him - plush, big-toed feet pointed up to the ceiling, nowhere to stand or walk on. I nodded and looked at the daycare director. "Don't worry," I said. "Nothing serious - he's just introverted. Some day, the kids will understand that."

Miss Guide by Belinda Roddie At the entrance to the restless trail, you'll find a small middle-aged woman beckoning to you, dressed in brown so that the dirt drapes around her like the hem of a skirt dusting her ankles dry. "If you come with me," she says, "you will find solace in a hammock and a cold iced tea. You'll have chocolates handed to you on glass with confidence sprinkled on top, sweet and forgiving." Then, once you're in the ditch with seventeen hundred other people, scratching their crispy scalps in bewilderment, you'll wonder if that little woman has skipped back off to the entrance, eager to explain the great way again.

"You are the newest prisoner. Your name will be nothing but a single syllable, to identify you. We don't give you a number because we aren't barbarians. You will be expected to follow the rules, and if you do, you will be treated with respect. Not cruelty." Donna blinked. She stood motionless in front of the incarceration council. "So what's my prison name, then?" The head councilwoman smiled. "Your name, m'dear, will be Dash."

If he only knew the complexity of the situation, she thought to herself as she stood over his sleeping body, snoring away, the rumblings of distant dream trains rattling his nostrils and shaking the loose hairs on his balding head. If he only could comprehend the pros and cons she had to weigh out in a mere handful of minutes - no, seconds - before things went awry. "I'm sorry, my love," she cooed in her dreary, thin voice, before she lifted the crowbar.