My Cardboard Balcony

Twenty Minutes by Belinda Roddie Twenty minutes before the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, I sat in the cockpit of my plane, the glassy dome concealing my screams. I was only then eighteen years old, new to war, and consumed by a panic attack while trying to fly the patrol. I witnessed the mushroom cloud swell in front of me, the sky, once blue, going gray and red from the inferno. I managed to fly back to base, and as I sat crying into my hands, I know my friend from school sat beside me, a mask of stoicism on his face. He pulled me into his arms, his hair lit with gold.

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His Fingers Were Red And Raw by Belinda Roddie After I held his hand, he fetched a bottle of sanitizer. After I kissed him, he washed his mouth out with mean, green Listerine. I didn't know what kind of game he was playing, but I slapped him hard across his jaw, and I made sure I didn't scrub my hands first, just to make the fucker squirm. Once five years passed, I realized the extent of his compulsions. Once I heard him sobbing over the sink, the clarity struck me harder than I ever struck him. I don't get why I was so harsh, but I knew he was better off without me clinging to him, like a stain he could never clean off, like a bacterial reminder of his own breakdown.

The small restaurant's name was, in wooden paneling reminiscent of a TV set you would buy in the nineteen eighties - was simply "Nourish," and when you stepped inside, the smell of sterilized linoleum and just a hint of chai would rush up to your nostrils and commence a full-on battalion assault. When I first walked into Nourish, I was in the mood for a coffee. I felt like I had stumbled into a sanitized hipster hospital.

The Creeper On The Second Floor by Belinda Roddie I'm lifted from my bed by a hand I cannot see. The invisible fingers prod the dents and divots in my back, a textured mosaic across my skin. I am being guided to the window, where I see her dragging a scratched oar across the watery mouth of the canal. Just glancing at her is like receiving a vaccine for the first time. I am protected from all ills, the ache in my arm from the metaphorical needle subsiding quickly, with a warmth replacing the vacuum in my chest. The palm concealed from my sight presses hard into my shoulder, and I careen into the pane, the imprint of my cheek lingering, my shallow breaths fogging up the glass. She looks up briefly, her eyes widen, and she rows faster, faster, until she beats the current back and disappears from my view. I am only a simple soul yearning for more than a shadow to love me. I will keep watching her when I can, while my imaginary confidante gives me insight on ...

No OneWord update today. Happy Wednesday!

NOTE: This poem was actually written on March 31st, 2016. I decided to hold off on posting it until I had performed it in front of the high school English class I am co-teaching, as part of a unit they were doing that involved performance poetry. Enjoy. To The Tightrope Walkers by Belinda Roddie I am faithful to a personal balance. I am devoted to an equilibrium. A tightrope has been tied between two rough lips of a gorge, and placing one foot after the other, I straddle the tense bridge that connects me to the other side, and once I reach it, I carefully turn around and go back the way I came, and so it goes, forever. I am not an acrobat by any stretch of the imagination, but I still expect myself to keep steady so I don’t fall into the deep ravine below, where one current takes me one way, and another takes me the opposite direction. Angry rapids and jagged rocks eagerly wait for me to succumb to a seemingly inevitable plunge. An F and an M are carved into th...