My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie She thought it was over. She was sure that there was no way it could happen again. It did. It came back, and it was crueler and more painful than ever. She was left contorted against her cot at nights, one hand clutching her head while the other gripped the ivory frame so tightly that all of the color dripped away from her fingers. More than once, she would faint from the agony, and she would wake up with blood still pooling from her flared nostrils. The first two times it happened, she went to the innkeeper for more pillows. When he began to grow frustrated with seeing the smears of red on his sheets, she would flip over the cushions a few times so that the blood could dry, and she could finally attempt to sleep. The migraines she suffered through were nothing new to her, though the reprieve had lasted a good twenty years at this point. It was a minor fraction of the number of years she had actually lived - or endured, perhaps, was a more accurate word - but it...

"If all else fails," commented Harold, "we'll have to..." "We'll have to?" He sighed. "We might  have to reconsider everything. Look, you and I want to be walking down the same path here. But if you're successful and I'm not, or if it's the other way around...well, you know how that can change the dynamic in a relationship. Usually badly." "How can you say that?" I demanded. My beer was getting warm in its glass. "I mean, how can you lack so much confidence in us?"

A lot of stuff happened today. This morning, it was bad stuff. This afternoon, it was better stuff. This evening, it was great stuff. Lots of stuff. Stuffy stuff. ...Yeah, I'm going to bed. G'night, everyone!

Up in Flames by Belinda Roddie When the propane truck exploded, I heard the children scream.

There was Samson, scraggly hair and beard, dressed in his best black T-shirt and jeans, standing on the corner. He was passing out pink slips of fragile paper. Flyers for the small metal concert held in the back of the dive bar where he held a dead-end, minimum wage job, fobbing off recycled sheets of advertising to any helpless passerby still twiddling on their phones and borderline sucking their thumbs. His eyes were like black vacuums as he handed out the modern parchment, drawing in every night star like his skull was lifting up two tiny black holes.

November Hearts by Belinda Roddie November hearts are broken when the warmth of sunsets dissipates into their cups of coffee, and the cold is then reborn as a large, overbearing mother, hugs and kisses tattooing each stranger's arms as they mask their disdain beneath black coats. They drive past pastures, hills, and dairy farms where early snow just barely glazes boats left hooked to cars in driveways. I loved you once, you know. You exhaled cinnamon, which I inhaled. Our somber rendezvous was interrupted by the elements, the winds and rain. You left me badly bruised, my frostbitten aorta split in two.

"I say we execute her!" squealed the tiny king, waving his hands around in wide, sweeping motions. His wife shushed him. "Alfred, dear," she coaxed, "that is simply over the top. The poor girl simply wandered in without knowing what was happening. Let's just ask her what she wants before we obviously say no and escort her out, shall we?" So much for a functioning monarchy, I thought to myself.