My Cardboard Balcony

You guys ever heard of a mukbang, or meokbang? It's apparently this online trend where people eat on camera for their fans. I'm not exactly focused on the actual substance of a mukbang, though - I just freaking love the word. I love language, guys. I love wordplay and semantics and colloquialisms and prose and poetry. I love the way vocabulary has expanded and changed throughout history and across cultures. I love how we incorporate words from other languages into our own dialect and just go to town. The slang, the regional phrases, all that - it just reminds me of why I love writing and speaking and music and performance because language is a part of all that. It's what separates us from every other living creature on this tiny planet. I guess what I'm trying to say here is...is that I'm really tired, guys. I'm exhausted. By everything. This week was really long, and really difficult to get through. I'm not going to get too into the political bullshit...

You Cannot Silence Me by Belinda Roddie I'm not your enemy simply because I report the truth.

I say we write a brand new Declaration of Independence. I say we nail it onto every door in the office of Congress. Make the fuckers read it seven times to remind them of what this country was meant to be: Free, brave, democratic, and ballsy. Yes, I said ballsy. Because some people running the nation seem to have forgotten their gonads at the door. Fetch a hammer and some nails, my friends! Who's with me?

That Awkward Moment by Belinda Roddie That awkward moment when your weirdo ex who likes to camp out with the bees and bears wakes you up one night with a rambling text about fire and grizzlies and underwear left out to dry after a cold creek swim, but then a yellow jacket nest was kicked, and now the chance of pain-free days is slim since bee and wasp stings make your weird ex sick, and antihistamine just makes them slur and sway and get all incoherent, so they figure, why not send out a great blur of words that trail off into vertigo, and confuse you at two AM: Just stare at your screen and remember you don't care.

I wanted to hold you in my arms, but all I could do was say, "I'm sorry for your loss." I wanted to dry your tears on the sleeve of my suit jacket, but all I could do was hand you a flimsy piece of tissue. I wanted to walk with you along the coast after the service was over, taking off my shoes and feeling the sand between my toes - a reminder that I was still alive, that you were still alive, that we were going to probably be alive for a long time, even while others died. But all I could do was watch you weep, and breathe in, and breathe out, and taste the air.

Seeing Double by Belinda Roddie Let's be real: There are parts of me that I love with all my heart. The little physical details that make for one unique, expressionist piece of art. The size ten feet in black shoes, and the big, brawny hands, with the size eight and a half engagement ring and an equally fitted wedding band. The mighty calves, taut and bold with smooth, mean muscle from so many rigorous strolls. The broad shoulders I appreciate, too. They give me the frame of a soldier, when truly I have the name of a poet. The thick neck and the brick wall back, the thin but arching brow, the sharply curved cheekbones, the perfectly proportioned nose. I love the way my lips curl when the words get too noisy behind my tongue and want to be heard so badly that they forget how to wait their turn. I adore my eyes - their tint, their shape, their size, the way the light splits up the spectrum when it hits my hazel watercolors just right. There are parts of me ...

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