My Cardboard Balcony

You Left Us by Belinda Roddie You left us, Father, for another child and wife. Our family just wasn't good enough for you anymore. My once wild younger sister? I tamed her, while you stood in front of the altar with your new dame. My brother? He's a football star acing all of his classes. Mother's not the same, either, you know. She's stronger, stopped drinking, and made some friends, found some new passions, no thanks to you. We've snagged summer jobs, no thanks to you. The three of us worked hard to go to fully paid college programs, no thanks to you. You left for a new child and wife but also left us all a better life.

I heard her footsteps outside my door, the scuffing of leather boots against the straw mat. A couple of clicks and snaps, then a rush of hot air, signaled that she was lighting a cigarette. I was not inside my house. I was, instead, in the garden on the left side, tending to the squash plants that I had watered a few hours earlier when the sun wasn't so hot and heavy in the sky.

Runaway by Belinda Roddie The hills are stained red at sunset, and I am blissfully alone, counting the loose change in my pockets while awaiting the endless confetti of stars. There's a tickle in the grass beneath me, like the itch of frayed sheets on an old bed - comforting, inviting, and familiar, stretching dreams like taffy, thinner and more vulnerable, but longer, with more space to grow, and more time to run from the monsters. I have collected loose eyelashes that have fallen from me, blowing each one into the overhead zephyr. My wishes are cheap and unwilling to transmit into reality. But wishes are wishes, and dreams are dreams, and when colors turn from crimson to indigo, I find truth in the pictures that fade fast from me when I dare to rise off the dirt that's fed me.

I had been trying, and failing miserably, to keep my cool. Now, as the group stood in the kitchen with their heads lowered in exaggerated mourning for Unch, I could feel the veins begin to bulge from my forehead. Furiously, I yanked open a cupboard door, snatched a plate, and held it above my head for everyone to see. "What is wrong with all of you?!" I roared. "Unch is dead! Get angry! Break something!" And I did, before anyone could react, slamming one plate down onto the floor and watching it splinter before grabbing another.

Bad Poet, Worse Chef by Belinda Roddie My brain's baked; my hands are wrung. I can't right wrongs, but I can write them. The sun makes meat out of my mental state, string beans from string theory. I have cooked my words and marinated them, but they still have no obvious taste.

"Which one of them stood out to you?" the casting director asked me, passing me the headshots. I scratched at the whitehead glowing from my chin as I perused the picture of the actresses we had just seen. So far, none of them had really blown me away, but we weren't necessarily getting massive lines out the door for this production. Still, picky writers have picky minds, so I exhaled sharply, nostrils flaring slightly, and passed the photos back, shaking my head. "None of them."

The Gods Are Irritated by Belinda Roddie truth be told, the air is thick with spirits foaming at the mouth, the suds whiter than the teeth of the ocean, the salt mixing with the savory breeze, turning it tender as a sacrificial lamb shank. you can lick the plate clean when the discourse is done.