My Cardboard Balcony

She Sat Alone by Belinda Roddie She sat alone with all her vintage books, counting each one from her small, wooden perch. Her coats remained hung on their metal hooks, for she had not been outside since the church incident twenty years ago. And yet she never read the stories that she kept, nor tell them to the red-haired, beaming set of grandchildren she had. Still, as she slept, she dreamed of tales she'd heard while still a child: In songs hummed by her mother, anecdotes provided by her father, and the wild adventures recalled on her uncle's boats as they sailed out to sea. She'd never need to touch these books. Besides, she couldn't read.

Once again, no update on the OneWord website. There hasn't been a lot of consistency with new daily word prompts; let's hope it'll become more routine again soon. Happy Friday!

Incompatible Partners by Belinda Roddie My God, are you a ninja? Because you keep disappearing on me, staying hidden in shadows I can't see. It's too dark, and I'm not wearing my glasses. To be fair, I'm a pirate. I can't stay on land for too long. My wanderlust is as important to me as insulin, and I'm too caught up in the sirens' song to notice all my demons. Let's keep this simple, love: Maybe we'll meet at the right time and place, but for only a moment, before you flee in a puff of smoke, and I slice away the illusion with my cutlass.

"Okay. Idea, guys. You ready?" The collective groan was all I needed to hear before I pressed forward. "Okay, so...I start a cake business. But the cakes are packed with nutrients. You know, the kind that'll give you energy in the morning. I'll call it: 'The Power Cake Walk.'" More groans. One of my friends threw his pencil at me. They were just mad that they hadn't thought of it first.

To Ethan Galloway by Belinda Roddie You meant so much to me. You were the vibrant addition to my stilted reality, and the harbinger of my homosexuality. Ethan Galloway. You had that name because it fit you, and also because, if I had been you, it would have fit me to a tee. You got the chance to speak in a charming, rugged Scottish brogue as an exchange student at an all-American high school, and later, an all-American university. You were the epitome of the cool European, somehow gaining a bad boy reputation while breaking exactly zero percent of the rules. And you were quite the looker, too. You had beautiful brown hair with all the right curls. You made a T-shirt and torn jeans look like the sweetest wardrobe in the world, and you could play every single instrument, and well, too. Now, of course, by "every single instrument," I mean the popular ones, like guitar, and piano, and drums, and maybe bass, too, because as we all know, sometimes it...

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

Oh, My King! by Belinda Roddie He thrives on bone stripped of their meat. Hungry for more than stone, he is willing to draw a snake's fang from his belt and kill his brother with its venom. But he won't, for fear that his brother's wife would avenge him, and so his crown would be settled on a head of red curls as he turns to dust on a wooden stool that was once a throne. How meager is his legion of subjects! They huddle like starved insects in their hollow hives, only buzzing when he forcefully extracts praise from their petrified jaws. His daughter, fair maiden, has run away. The wind has carried her in its long, icy arms to the rival kingdom, where she has married their queen. That queen has knights built like golems, and a legendary sword to smite the damned. This emasculated monarch would do well not to upend the order between the two countries. But he craves more than stone. He feasts on gold and jewels from traitors' corpses. He dra...