My Cardboard Balcony

Introspection? Bah. I'm visiting my sister and her boyfriend in New York right now. I have no time for such shenanigans. But have a great night and a great weekend, everyone. Oh, and Happy Passover and Happy Easter!

Radiation by Belinda Roddie Under the mushroom cloud, we pick mutated flowers and sing.

Updates on the OneWord website have been a bit spotty lately. Must be the holidays!

Once Upon A Blue Moon by Belinda Roddie Once upon a blue moon, I caught a fish that spoke to me as I sat on the grass, promising me that he would grant a wish to me, as if I were a simple ass who would believe anything. I declined and tossed the scaly thing back to the sea, where it struggled against a wave of brine and cursed and spat, its anger geared toward me, but I did not heed its foul words. I swore not to rely on seafood to improve my life, or prevent me from a dull bore of an existence, or to swiftly move my soul into action. No, I would not devote my time to a bass or a cod.

I stood in front of the preacher's crowd, and every congregant began to glow. They glowed red for Christ's passion and blue for Mother Mary's mood, and gold for monarchs' piety and silver for peasants' real dedication. I took the new theses and hammered them on Father Warren's door, waiting for him to read them. But they were in ancient tongues, and as I was afflicted, my body convulsed with the Holy Spirit.

Pay the Ferryman by Belinda Roddie I came across the river Styx and felt the soul inside me melt. I'd thought the next life more than this, and not this pot of tears and tricks that carried me from Orion's belt. Kharon was waiting in his boat, his hair pulled back, revealing bones, and once I boarded, we started to float down streams forced down a devil's throat, the water gushing 'round blackened stones. As we both sailed the river Styx, I gripped the boat's sides, splinters trapped between my fingers, my eyes lit by flames that glowed blue once they met the air from which all life was sapped. I asked Kharon, "Much farther now?" and yet he did not answer. He just cast a dim, skeletal frown. His wordless questions: Why? And how? And just what was the point of me? And just what was the point of all the bodies huddled on the bed of Styx, making their panicked calls to ferrymen who rode to halls of ever growing swarms of red? ...

"Who's standing in your driveway?" No one I knew. She was tall and handsome and dressed in all blue. She wore a big hat all jaunty on her head, and the only different color was on her lips: Dark red. She waved with gloved fingers as I pulled up beside her, a smile revealing the slyness inside her. I asked her, "Excuse me, is there something you need?"