My Cardboard Balcony

Witness To An Accident by Belinda Roddie I am not waiting for the traffic light to change. There's a pile-up on the shoulder, and the road's running wild red, wild red, wild red, like an animal wounded on a field of black and white - it's like photography in motion, but also stopped like a premature heartbeat. Let me keep driving - so I don't have to see the sagging body bags - so I don't have to hear the keening banshees clinging to the roofs of police cars as their stoic metal faces grin sheepishly against the asphalt - so I don't have to feel the metaphorical boa constrictor wrap around my chest and attempt to suffocate me with my own primal emotions and latent fear of death. No, officer, I don't know why you pulled me over. I was in the middle of an anxiety attack in which I was questioning my own miserable mortality while some schmuck was crammed into a sack even though the blood was still wet in his eye sockets, and al...

Time to camp out under the stars, make s’mores with chocolate bars. Forget the trains and planes and cars – we’re naked under the moon. Take a swim in the freezing lake. Find a claim of land to stake. After all, it’s yours to take, but it’ll be burned up soon.

Bromancing The Stone? by Belinda Roddie Being bros over brunch is so invigorating, man. The tang of the mimosas, the cowlick in your sick salt-and-pepper hair. Eggs benedict and salmon while your wife finds comfort in her own reflection, distorted in the swan's neck of her glass. Once we're done brunching like kickass superheroes, we'll jog back to your man cave, homie, and play video games until the veins look like spider webs across our eyes. Blow the dust off the NES, and we'll rehash the classics before the old hunk of metal and plastic overheats, and we'll take a break for pizza rolls and bad beer. And then your wife locks herself in the bedroom again, and you look so crestfallen over your can of Coors, and all I want to do is comfort you, bro - my hand on the curve of your back where your jersey number turns neon against my fingers, where you are so temptingly warm.

Seven TV screens were built into the wall in front of me, and all seven of them bore the same, tired face of an older man. That face stared at me no matter where I stood, no matter where I sat, no matter where I turned my head. His weathered brown skin was subdued by the quality of the projections that presented him, but his eyes were fierce balls of green fire.

He wanted everything, and she wanted nothing from him. He wanted to reach the moon, and she was comfortable remaining beneath Earth's atmosphere. He sent her flowers as a symbol of grand romance, and she found the petals drooping before she even touched the cluster of green stems. Perhaps he was too poetic for her - and yet, she was far too realism-based for him to stomach.

by Belinda Roddie I wondered where she went, who she was with, and if he was blond like me. I wondered if she still smelled like peppermint and bitter salt from the sea. I wondered if he worked odd jobs, or if he made enough money for three. I knew she wanted a kid one day, but she didn't want one with me. I wondered if they went on walks together, and if during them, they held hands. Perhaps they went to museums together, or ate junk from hot dog stands. I wondered if he was a poet, or into philosophy. They could read Descartes and Camus together, or Plato's cave allegory. They could break from the metaphorical shackles together, and kiss under Kentucky moons. Or maybe they could travel the world whenever, braving summer monsoons. They could start their own farm in Wyoming, or be cowboys in Tennessee. They could start a dog rescue in San Diego, or learn jazz in North Orleans. Maybe they could change the world together, if they both agreed to try. And he'd tel...

In the English classroom, every student sat upright, kept their eyes forward, and listened intently as the teacher spoke. The teacher herself was young - wild-eyed, unkempt hair, dressed head to toe in black, save for a quaint red bowtie that she must have knotted herself. She gesticulated madly as she spoke, until all at once she settled down, cleared her throat, and said, "Pens and journals out."