My Cardboard Balcony

Tonight's Celebration by Belinda Roddie Sweetheart, blow out your birthday candles and make three extra wishes to keep in your back pocket. When the cake is cut, I'll meet you out on the deck for beer and s'mores, and we'll toast to another twenty more years before this town goes to Hell. Love, kiss me twice before you go back inside, to comb the confetti out of your hair and force a smile for your father. I'll be waiting outside, in this thick dragon breath summer, sipping lukewarm poor man's champagne and marveling at how the amount of stars I see match your age, such a small number, in the grand scheme of things.

You want proof? Proof that I'm a good person? Proof that I was never unfaithful to you? Go fuck yourself. Really? I figured my own words would have more value than your BFF's, or your mother's, or your sister's or brother's. Yet apparently, it's my words against everyone else's. Because they know everything there is to our relationship, huh? Unbelievable. Fucking unbelievable.

Before It Was Cool by Belinda Roddie We don't drink from mason jars - we slurp boxed wine with crazy straws like juice pouches, then squirt the stuff between our teeth in random purple spurts, creating a fountain that stains the cheap kitchen table. Does bragging about that make us as bad as the hipsters, the tight jean'd, beanie'd coffee enthusiasts gentrifying the downtown? Maybe. I just like wine.

Frank peeled potatoes in the kitchen while I cut out newspaper clippings. It was for some sort of art project for Barry. He said his teacher wanted him to find vocabulary words and glue them onto some sort of household object, which would ultimately mutate into some sort of linguistic pun. I found an old broom we didn't use anymore, but Barry's hand still didn't work right since he broke it playing lacrosse, so I was left with the manual work while he perused his vocab list from the corner of the table.

The priest at my church called the youth group the "new flock," which felt so odd and awkward to me. It was like we were all impressionable lambs, ready to be religiously molded into bleating, compliant sheep. I know what Father Hendricks was attempting to do; he was trying to bring Jesus's own words into our activities. He was the shepherd of his people, after all. But I still didn't like the idea of being shaped into an obedient cattle animal.

by Belinda Roddie A sickening crash shook Devon's helicopter, and she watched as the streets below her erupted in gunfire. "Fucking Mondays," she sighed. She reached into the small paper bag she kept bunched up against her right ankle and produced a sandwich wrapped up in foil. Freeing it from its plastic prison, she took a big bite and let the mustard and pastrami tickle her tongue with spiciness, just as the APF began moving in to clean up the mess. Down in the murky metropolis of New Chicago, people were attempting to cook up another war, sort of like throwing rotten potatoes into a pot and seeing if it would make a good soup. The APF - "Android Pigfuckers," the rioters called them, rather than "Android Police Force" - were certainly more efficient than their human counterparts. Yes, there were still real men and women who joined the authoritarian fight, though they were often discredited for their more emotional drawbacks and lack of agility ...

The doctor told us that Sasha should make a full recovery in two weeks. Until then, all we could do was spend time with her. Sasha's older brother, Cole, had just returned from a six month tour in Afghanistan. He never wanted to leave her side. He brought her a vase of tulips and left them by her hospital bed, and one night, I caught him singing a made up little ditty to get her to sleep. It was like they were young again, sledding in the mountains and smiling arm in arm.