My Cardboard Balcony

Where Were You by Belinda Roddie Where were you when we set the church on fire, exposing all the skeletons inside? Their bones gleamed orange as each solemn spire crumbled like sugar, redemption denied. Once entombed, they were freed, the smiling skulls with crooked teeth, all torched by searing heat, and one by one, their purgatoried souls found quiet sleep eternal underneath the earth. They were unnamed but had been killed by Christ's so-called "apostles." Heretics, they called them. Sick and blasphemous. Weak-willed. We freed them from their mortal cages. Bits of ash clung to our clothes, but you weren't there. We'd destroyed pure evil. You didn't care.

"Her skin was soft as silk," she wrote before crumpling up the binder paper in her left fist and tossing it into the nearest wastebasket. Bah. "Soft as silk." Why did everyone like using that? Holly was sure that human skin was not the same as silk texture-wise. If anything, skin had bumps and grooves and hills and valleys. That seemed better than comparing it to a piece of cloth.

Under The Arch by Belinda Roddie Under the arch, we cried and cried because our poor father had died. He was thrown in a ditch by our mother, that bitch, so we sat in the shade that was black as pitch, and we cried and we cried and we cried and we cried. And we cried and we cried and we cried.

After the party, we regrouped at the bus stop on the edge of town in order to figure out what to do and where to go next. Tripp, our pseudo-leader, had a half-full bottle of vodka that he passed around. "Here's my idea," he said as we shared cold, harsh swigs. "We head up Cross Hill."

Hometown Blues by Belinda Roddie Dropped out of high school to sell handmade cigars at the market every Thursday. Made a killing, actually. People thought the shitty stogies I rolled were Cuban. Nah, bro. Homegrown, full-blooded American. You can't import that kind of nationalist spirit. Stains your teeth red, white, and blue and makes you spit fireworks. My dad had been a welder 'til he lost all five fingers on his left hand in a freak accident he won't go into detail about. It must have been freaky, because we only found out about the injury when he staggered home, drunk, with blood dripping from the mangled lump of flesh attached to his wobbling wrist. He didn't want to go to the emergency room 'cause we didn't have healthcare and he didn't want my mom to go bankrupt. Nice guy, I guess. Right now, he's dying from liver cancer. Loves his whiskey more than he loves his kids. Found my ex-girlfriend at the old arcade that somehow...

No update on the OneWord website today. Oh, well!

The Breaking Of The Institution by Belinda Roddie Out of his mouth splashed the litany: Straighten yourself out, and choose your own destiny. I do not pledge allegiance to any flag or symbol. I don't care if you carve that damn mantra into my back and let it get infected. I'll die before I utter the words, "under God." And yet, there he was, invoking some sort of power beyond his own mind. Nearby, pews creaked under listeners' weight. He fetched a rag from his jacket and wiped his face. Moist shadows remained on the cloth before he shoved it back into the fabric abyss it came from. Trumpets blew outside, and the soldiers saluted. The mob mentality faded. Each member of the congregation felt their fanaticism disintegrate. They embraced the identity crisis that fell upon them like rain. They walked out single file, individuals lost in their own head space, no words of any prophet or leader stuck within the hammering canals of their ears. ...