My Cardboard Balcony

This Life I Lead by Belinda Roddie This life I lead, I know is temporary, though I'll admit, I wish it'd last for longer - each day a gift, each hour secondary, but still worth every minute. As the stronger of our short humanity wanes away, I keep my mental diary intact, so that my memory retains each day that I wish I was able to enact and repeat over and over again. I am afraid of Death - but Death is still biding its time, touching the window pane, but never moving to enforce its will. At least I know that, after this endeavor, I can pretend that I have lived forever.

Somehow, Ben didn't exactly feel safe, not even when he heard the bark of the guard dog right by his gate, the ridge on its back clearly raised as it stood watch. He knew this because he observed its movements from his bedroom window, using a pair of cheap black binoculars that he had a habit of wearing around his neck. His mansion was protected - but only for now.

One More Birthday by Belinda Roddie She holds her head up as high as she possibly can, kisses the neck of her girlfriend and laughs at bad jokes, all while remembering the blue necktie with the saxophone on it that she wanted to wear for the concert that night. But her father hid it away where she couldn't find it, and her mother scolded her for wearing a shirt that, in her parents' view, made her far too masculine for the mold they had crafted for her to fit in at all times. So for now, she waits for adulthood to officially stamp her forehead so that nothing can touch her. She is already patient in a room with gray walls, where her teacher smiles and talks warmly about their wife without the fear of consequences hanging over their head like the blunted blade of a guillotine.

The winter of our discontent was never quite made glorious summer. We made our camps and lit small fires to ward away the evil spirits. At night, we all sang songs that were meant to raise the morale of our soldiers, but in the morning, the armor remained rusty, and the swords blunt, and our confidence shredded like ice in a quick yet violent storm. I stayed behind when the first battle started. And I stayed behind when the second ended badly as well.

Second Chance by Belinda Roddie second chance to do it all to drink the shots you poured out for the dead to burn your hands on hot asphalt to dance to music you never thought you liked to kiss the girl you truly loved only to have her walk away every time to tell your father at long last why he'll never be the man you always looked up to to see sunrises without faces to miss sunsets and close book chapters to sing the songs you've memorized before and die the same death you wanted to avoid to wonder why you tried again when the first time in the end was just enough

Wake me up in a soundproof room, where all the screams of the damned are entombed. No one hears the echoes of funeral dirges, or of curses and slights, or of sexual urges. There are bones in the wall and hearts beating in the corners. I can feel the heat radiating off the houseowner. He collects us together - it's inevitable. He'll break all of your spirit and drink from your skull.

Safe Haven by Belinda Roddie Feeling claustrophobic, I decided to take refuge in the atrium of an old, Roman villa that I was supposed to sell, but instead, it seemed that I was making it entirely my own safe haven in an imaginary storm. When I was there, I made myself the same soup every day - the kind with chewy noodles and dried out chicken, a broth that somehow comforted me as I slurped it down in front of a television that I couldn't actually turn on - the cords had been cut. The real estate agency I worked at fired me, but they could never move me out. I kept the open sky in glass above my head, and after the rain stopped, I found that the sunlight bothered me, too, and so I stayed in a place where my heart made echoes.