My Cardboard Balcony

The First Chair by Belinda Roddie Bounce me like a cello on your knee and play all four of my strings. I tremble beneath your dancing fingertips and love the music you coax out of me. There are songs I never, ever thought I knew how to sing. There are chords we strike together at the bus stop and rundown diner. I enjoy being propped against your hips, swiveling between your knees, my sternum caressed like a fingerboard, while you draw your bow across my quivering stomach and you find all the right notes.

"Dude. Where did you get the van?" "Used dealership. It runs great, actually." Nicky cocked her head and looked at me like a confused puppy. "Why? Don't like it?" I laughed. "You look like you're ready to kidnap some children." "Oh, dude. C'mon." I held up my hands in pseudo-defeat. "Sorry." "Besides," Nicky added, "even if I did have candy in this van, I wouldn't give it to bratty kids."

Damn It, Fido by Belinda Roddie Anthony Moore put his heart in a bag, tied it with ribbon and left it on my doorstep. My dog chewed it up before I got around to holding it in my warm, clammy hand.

No update on the OneWord website today. Le sadness.

Beer Run by Belinda Roddie Four of us pile into Johnny's buck-toothed truck, heading to the liquor store to buy a six-pack each. Chelsea smashes the aluminum against her teeth, and we just laugh and laugh. We're all too hammered to drive now, so Johnny tucks away his car keys, and we stagger to the beach just down the street. The sand bristles between our toes like gold curling in shiny tendrils around all the divots and curves in our feet. Everything smells like last Saturday, when I took Lorraine to the cliffs, where she stripped me of all reason and rhyme. We all swap cans, take sips of each other's sins, pine for newfound sanity. We're not idealistic clichés of lost souls. We're just here, getting drunker by the minute, letting our brains slosh around like the waves in front of us, trying to sync with the drumbeat of the moon.

The door was locked. The gate was bolted. The windows were all latched. I sat in the center of my study, alone, my hands shaking under the blanket that Lester had thrown over me. He had told me not to move. He had told me that he would return when everything was safe. When the coast was clear. It had been four hours since he had shut me in that room. I could hear my own breathing. It was like hearing the death rattle from my own quivering lungs.

Seth put out a bowl of candy for the children to pick at, and then he led me into his office. The room was white and shrouded with red curtains, so the entire space had a soft, yet evocative, pink glow. I sat down on one of the couches, and Seth wheeled his way over to his desk, swiping a folded piece of paper from its surface before opening it up. "I've wanted to read this to you for a long time," he said, "but I didn't want your kids to know about it."