My Cardboard Balcony

Morning With A Marionette by Belinda Roddie I woke up an hour before the show, and I stretched and felt the muscles in my arms and back become elastic, the puppet master tightening the strings throughout my body, making me stiff and taut and ready to dance.

The suit was ready, and Carol was super stoked to pick it up. Only problem: When she went in, the shopkeeper wouldn't sell it to her. He hadn't been the same person she worked with last night, and he was convinced that the suit should be picked up by a man, not a blushing bride-to-be. "How about this," Carol warned the clueless guy, cracking the knuckles on her right hand. "Sell me the suit, or you'll be seeing so many stars and rainbows that you'll start questioning if you're really gay."

There was no real set timeline for the project. Tom just wanted it done. He didn't care if it was done in five months or five years or fifty years. He simply wanted to work on it, work on it to his heart's content and enjoy every fleeting minute or hour or day or longer of it so that life didn't seem so laborious to him. He wrote and rewrote, drew and redrew, filmed and filmed again. He constantly edited. He didn't know who would watch his project, or who would even care to. No matter what, this project was him. And it was all he had.

by Belinda Roddie "She's...a haiku." "Poetic?" "Short." "Get out of here." "No, really. Like, five-seven-five? No, like, five foot seven minus five." "So she's five foot two?" "Yeah." "That's not so bad." "It is when you're a super haiku." "A super haiku?" "Yeah. 6-7-2." "Uh-huh." "Six foot seven plus two." I laughed. Gerald was definitely tall, the tallest guy in the entire town. When he walked into a room, especially while he was wearing his cowboy hat, everyone looked at him. One time, when he entered a restaurant, the piano player stopped in the middle of his sonata just to stare. A six foot nine guy can do that. Even to the professionals. We were sitting at the corner of the bar. Always the corner. Because if we didn't, Gerald would be blocking someone who wanted to watch the baseball game. I...

His voice was nearly indistinct compared to the noise of the stereo and the hammering of crickets outside. Everything seemed to pound against my head, and as he pulled me toward him, any sweet nothings he attempted to slip into my ears turned into liquid static that just trickled down the side of my face and left me with no response or real capability of listening. It wasn't until I heard the clock strike nine that I finally found the energy to stand up and move away, quickly, to the welcoming heat of the kitchen.

It has been a busy, busy week. First, I faced some trials in my teaching job, which of course was to be expected. Also, I hit the city and celebrated Bastille Day. Then I participated in a ping pong tournament. I later jammed in the music room at the school I worked at and got in touch with my musician side again. I worked a weekday shift at my bookstore for the first time in quite a while and got frazzled when nobody would leave at closing time. And today, I fell off my new bike, cleaned up my scraped knees, finished a transcription job, and got to see my fiancée shine in the opening night performance of Pirates of Penzance. ...Yeah, I'm tired. I'm going to bed. Have a great night and a great weekend, everyone.

Nooses and Neck Kisses by Belinda Roddie If this was love, then I was being slowly strangled.