My Cardboard Balcony

All the Homo by Belinda Roddie Down in the cellar, we feel no shame. Got a bottle of wine and some crisp champagne with your name on it, babe. This evening ain't a no go. We're kissing it out, and it's all the homo.

They told me that the medicine would sting, and sting it did. It was as if my arm had been assaulted by a thousand microscopic knives as I lay on the cot, my elbow unbent and my fingers extended straight outward as if attempting to cling to the clouds or the stars or God or whoever could save me from this pain. My mother stood on the opposite side of the room as I struggled to clench my teeth together, to muffle my screams. An hour later, before the agony had even begun to subside, the doctors administered the next dose.

Transfixed by Belinda Roddie She enters the restaurant at half past madness, when it's getting dark, but the summer air is still strawberry pie sticky, and there's not enough liquor in the world to quench your unending desert thirst. I watch from my corner table - sitting alone, as usual, having already turned my jacket purple from too much wine. A friend accompanies her, guiding her by the crook of her freckled arm, directing her to a stool while advising her not to pay attention to the calories listed beside each entree on the menu. "Don't worry about it," the friend says. "It's good food here. Just pretend that this night doesn't count." I remember her from high school days. The days she visited a locker only two down from mine. Back then, she wore baggy hoodies and paint-spotted jeans for art class, her cheeks and jaw raw and ragged and decorated with dozens of pink, round bandages. She tried desperately to shave aw...

An investigator was already at the scene when I arrived, her gloved finger suspended in the air as she seemed to trace out some sort of imaginary scenario emerging from the ether of her mind. As for me, I went straight to work. I started snapping pictures, first of the corner where the couch cushions were bloodied, then of the carpet, which looked more than just a little seedy. Something had definitely happened here, but there was no body to be found.

Our Cosmic Summer by Belinda Roddie I hold your planet in my hand, the granite hard against my bare feet. The June room spins seven hundred degrees. I am dizzy, and you kiss me in my lackadaisical vertigo. There is a tremor in the sediment of your personal world, your system that pretends to flawless against my fingers. If I squeeze hard enough, I can hear the wind squeal. I can feel the breath of millions realizing that they are simply a dream. I sway and swoon, but I never let go of you. I never release the galaxy you are attempting to weave. You'll need a few more chunks of rock floating in space to give it some complexity. Everything else can just be stars. Hot, unsympathetic, and practically divas the way they die. Prima donna supernovae take their final bows in your endless irises. You swivel me toward the wall. I loosen my grip. The ocean swells. Millions return to sleep. I am restless. I am lost among countless spirals.

I didn't mean to instigate anything. But one moment, Riley is on her feet, and the next, she's on the floor. I don't exactly understand what happened until I see the red start to leak from her left nostril. She tries to act tough, like it's not there, snorting the blood up into her septum like she's doing a line of rusty cocaine. But the ex-Marine standing over her, rubbing his now bruised knuckles, knows exactly what he's done - and just what kind of Hell he's in for now.

They say the mighty will fall, and the weak shall inherit the earth. I think all of them needs to go back to school to study basic science and anatomy. The weak can’t inherit squat. They’re weak . I mean, how else could you explain my continual success as a human being? I am one of the mighty. I have inherited the earth. I have minions to do my bidding, and I don’t fall victim to the stupid villain tropes like explaining one’s evil plan in great detail. You know what that would make me if I did that? Weak.