My Cardboard Balcony

I Ate An Apricot by Belinda Roddie I ate an apricot and fell asleep on the couch in the living room, and she found me snoring and drooling. She said, "Keep at it, and you'll be your own symphony and serenade the neighborhood." I laughed in my drowsy stupor and let her pull me off the sofa as if from a raft against the shore. She served me something cold to drink and something hot to eat. I shared another apricot with her, the sweet flavor giving me energy when paired with wine from the refrigerator. Heat radiated off her face, and I knew she had planned out this little rendezvous.

I remembered the smell of incense from my days as a good Catholic girl. The altar server would saunter down the aisle, a limp in his step, and swing the burning bowl about on its chain. My mom would complain, sometimes loudly, about the odor, though not in a verbal way; she would wrinkle her nose and cough just so the priest could give her a look, and she would smile sweetly as if she had done nothing to perturb the Mass at all.

Maple Syrup & Nightmares by Belinda Roddie Yesterday, I could not eat my pancakes - my pancakes wanted to eat me. They flew from my plate with teeth sharper than my fork, like angry, delicious monster frisbees. I tried to smother them with sugar and butter, but they would not be held back, and soon, I cowered in the corner, scratched and bruised, as the pancakes sought refuge in the hills beyond, thinking, "Maybe I'll stick with cereal tomorrow." Turns out the wheaties had it out for me, too.

George always tried to convince me that charcoal drawing wasn't a worthwhile hobby, but I kept at it until the details became more intricate, the shading more nuanced and the silhouettes more intimidating. When I hung my canvases and pages up on my walls, I could see George become more and more uncomfortable with the display. Good, I thought to myself. That anti-art bastard may as well stay in his room and play with his abacus.

Dearly Departed Traveler by Belinda Roddie "I'm flying to Madrid and canoeing to Greece," he told me over tea in the cramped café built the middle of a sunset. He wasn't kidding, either, and they found him half-submerged in salty debris and driftwood off the island of Crete. There were waterlogged laurels in his curly hair. Two weeks later, his sister bought a motorcycle and rode all the way from Boston to San Francisco to meet me and spread his ashes in the Pacific. "Not what he would've wanted," she told me, "but I'm not renting a helicopter to hover over the Mediterranean Sea." We exchanged numbers that day. We had sex for the first time four months later. When I woke up for the first time in a new place, I thought about packing just one bag and camping out in Alaska like Chris McCandless did, but with less dying involved. Then I saw her curled up in the sheets beside me, slightly droo...

As soon as I turned the music on, instantly Joseph started dancing. His hip gyrations for enough for our great-aunt Esther to "get the vapors," fanning herself and hiccuping as she attempted to finish off a sip of champagne. Her much younger husband Cameron, however, seemed entertained by the display, and he, too, got up and began to shake his pelvis around, much to the amusement, and horror, of our relatives.

Fraudulent Charges by Belinda Roddie Devil tried to get my credit card canceled, sweeping through Tennessee, buying up all the guns and ammo that he could see, swiping bottles of whiskey with each swipe of plastic. But there was something in it for me, and when I came home, the guy was slouched on my couch, drinking straight from the bottle and watching TV. "Reruns," he told me, hiccuping once, before offering a Colt for me to holster. "Want to go shoot some birds?"