My Cardboard Balcony

On Tuesday of this week, I graduated from my single subject teaching credential program. Of course, now I have to submit a bit of paperwork to actually get my credential, but that's simple enough. The main thing I have to deal with now is my future. Will I be staying at the job I have right now for another year? Or will I be transitioning to something else? One step at a time, I always say. In the meantime, tomorrow I will be celebrating students of mine who are graduating, as well as supporting good friends in theater. Next week will also be wonderful - my fiancée and I are being as sappy as all get out, attempting to reenact (as much as possible, that is) a week that included our first date, our first kiss, and our first confession of love. Obviously, I'll reveal more details to you, my lovely handful of readers, as they come. Have a great night and a great weekend, everyone!

Forget Red Bull® by Belinda Roddie When she kissed me, I sprouted wings. "I can fly!"

I treated myself to a Sierra Madre Sunrise - mezcal and all - as the cackling of the rooster subsided, even though it was three o'clock in the morning and both my partners and I could not get ourselves to fall asleep. The heat of the Mexican desert was enough to keep us restless - uncouth, even - so we calmed our intoxicated brains by dancing and singing, our bad Spanish ricocheting off the walls of our hotel room like a bouncy ball from our childhoods.

Tonight Was Cold by Belinda Roddie Tonight was cold and windy while we sat on the bench in the park, where dogs scurried past us, freed from their leashes. In a spat on the playground, pre-teens hollered and screamed at one another over God knows what. You held my hand, and you pulsated warmth that I wish I could keep in a jar, but the heat was fleeting. Finally, the storm was enough reason for us to go home and settle on the couch, watching TV and still holding hands. You let your eyes roam across the screen, while my mind wandered free from burdensome, common anxieties, though I knew it was all temporary.

"So, what is this?" asked Barry. "Some kind of secret nerdy cult?" "Very funny, Bobby." "Barry," he patiently corrected. "Whatever." Rose tossed back the hem of her red cloak, revealing a cardboard breastplate pinned to her torso. "It's storytelling. We meet up every Saturday to create new worlds and characters. You know, escapism at its finest." "I can endorse that," Barry said.

I'm Sorry, But I Had To by Belinda Roddie She fired the gun eight times, and eight bullets shrieked from its dripping nose. They left red kisses on the front of her father's shirt, her brother's blazer, her mother's blouse. Gray, blue, and white, stained by a foreign, violent love. All of them survived their wounds, and she was pulled screaming into the maw of a police car, its jaws snapping her up like raw meat, wailing as it spun her into a world of bars and tiny windows, windows that, when she peered out of them, only had drab, black and white views, fragments of sterile life before the alcohol and the drugs and the fights, before her husband clawed at her face and wished aloud that she were dead, before he poured toxins from highballs into her brain so that she thought her family was the enemy. She could only look at views the size of bullet holes.

It was easy to transform my image once I left high school and settled into college. I cut my hair. I wore flannel shirts instead of blouses. I bound my chest and let my kneecaps sneer from holes in my black jeans. My mother wouldn't let me start hormone therapy until I had gotten my degree, and I didn't really have another choice - I was on her healthcare, and I followed her rules. Still, I came up with a name I preferred more than my birth moniker: Ethan. That suited me.