My Cardboard Balcony

My Love In The Garden by Belinda Roddie I scampered to seek out my love, and I found him asleep in the garden. Rose petals were caught in his hair, and the winds gave his snoring no pardon. How calm and so deep into dreamland was he, my strange and impish darling! With eyes bright as coals in a fire and a nose like the beak of a starling. I was strong, so I carried my love to his bed and away from the garden. As I wrapped him in sheets, he then stirred just enough to speak in a weird jargon. His words, how they pittered and pattered and made not a sense in the slightest! Though my beau was a quick, cunning man, half-unconscious, he wasn't the brightest. Two moons hung in saucers above, and the window was peppered with stardust. I remembered the day that we met, and we checked to see who could run farthest. My love was as quick as a fox, and yet, to his chagrin, I was faster! And I even could outrace my sister, who gasped as I frolicked right past her. ...

There was definitely a lack of sympathy in the room, even after I had announced the death of my father. One of my managers had simply rolled her eyes, while the other manager stared straight past me, as if focusing on the intricate cracks and misshapen lumps in the wall. Finally, one of my coworkers, who I deeply loved, spoke. "Harriet." She walked toward me, and in my silent shock, she pulled me into a hug. "I'm so sorry."

Stir Well by Belinda Roddie My secret recipe for war needs more than ammunition: It requires a weak man or two, both prone to sweet sedition. Just hang their desires on a string and spark small provocations. When their sand castles are threatened, they'll drink oceans to wreck nations.

"Fire at will!" the captain screamed. "Can't!" barked his second. "We don't have the firepower!" "Then throw the whole load at 'em!" he shrieked. He was then stunned to see a shower of empty rifles, shotguns, and pistols rain down upon te enemy forces, hitting a few of them in the temples. "Well," the captain muttered. "My army's full of idiots."

Grubby Hubby by Belinda Roddie There's my grubby hubby tromping down the stairs, wearing the same old T-shirt with chip crumbs in his hair. He's done with video games tonight, so now it's time for beer. He gets one for me, too, y'know - he's really such a dear. My grubby hubby gives good hugs and cusses like a tar, burping out the alphabet while he drives his beat up car. He makes the kids laugh when he does his staple "belly shake," a dance move he invented to make giggly jawlines ache. The neighbors don't like him so much - they think he's far too dirty. Except for Missus Shaw, that is - with him, she gets real flirty. She tries to sneak him pizza rolls when he's mowing the lawn, but all her talk of chia pets just makes both of us yawn. The dads along the block say that my hubby's such a mess because of how he holds himself and 'cause of how he's dressed. They want to put him in a suit and have h...

I didn't think I was going to be so selective about my wife-to-be. Yet there I was, standing in a sterile steel hallway, looking upon mannequin after mannequin as the owner tried to convince me to pick a body model and stick to it. "After you choose the physical part," he told me, "you can add the personality!" It was like the Stepford Wives giving head to the Twilight Zone.

My mother had a bad cough, so she couldn't see my father while he was in the hospital, battling an infection that he had gotten from an innocuous surgery. In the meantime, I was hovering over a toilet in a bathroom just down the hall from his room, emptying my stomach of a foul fish sandwich that I had eaten on the drive over. I think I had it harder than my mom did at that point, though Pops definitely had us both beat.