My Cardboard Balcony

It's a hot pre-summer day, and once again, no update on the OneWord website. I miss the consistency, people!

Abandoned Car Wash by Belinda Roddie It's seven o'clock on a Monday night, and the place is dead. It's always dead. Sure, some cars whiz by from time to time, always heading east to a baseball game or west to an all-you-can-eat buffet on its last economically sound legs. But the drivers never stop here. No one's around to wash their beaten-up jalopies, anyway. Even five years after it closed, Old Ben's Car Wash still smells like bleach. The strong kind, too - not the flowery detergent type that makes all your laundry as fragrant as a middle-aged lady's rose garden. I'm talking about formaldehyde-level bleach, the kind you use when you need to clean up secrets. The pungent odor gets in your nose, and it burns, like every hair in your nostrils is set on fire. The inside of the car wash is gutted, but the whole area still smells like it's been embalmed and preserved. Like a plaster and steel mummy. Old Ben's Car Wash used to have a staff of thirt...

I was sweating profusely after the round, my hands shaking as I tried to steady myself against the floor. My opponent was already approaching me - his head was shaved, his jaw gleaming and free of stubble, a thin ribbon of blood still dangling from his nose. I stared at him and somehow managed to laugh. "I thought we were still in training mode," I joked. "Are we going to do more than spar now?" He didn't laugh. But he did return my smile. "Perhaps."

You ever had a productive week in which you feel proud of your students, especially one of them who's writing independently and enjoying it, and you're connecting with your coworkers a whole lot more before you have to leave for your new job, and you're staying at your parents' place taking care of two adorable animals with your wife, braving the heat by going on much needed walks, and then you go to the new school you're working at and get to know two of your yearbook students and talk more with the principal and get more and more excited about this new opportunity you have, especially since now you've signed the lease to a beautiful new condo that you get to move into by the end of the month? And then you drop an enormous bottle of Riesling you just bought on the ground after carrying it for a half hour, shattering it and thereby wasting a lovely amount of wine you were looking forward to drinking? No? Just me? Yeah, it's been one of those evenings, ...

That Burning Sonuvabitch! by Belinda Roddie One excruciatingly hot day, we swore revenge on the sun.

OneWord, I feel so abandoned right now. Please come back with more frequent updates. I miss you.

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.