My Cardboard Balcony

The Robbery by Belinda Roddie The robbery took place at twelve o'clock, when the sun blazed upon the backs of men who dressed in black jackets despite the shock of heat that lay upon their dark heads. When the two women approached the banker, their boots clicking on the wooden flew, he knew what was to happen, sensing how the hair stood on his hair before they even drew their pistols. Out came bags, and out came cash, dumped out of registers. The women fled with thousands of dollars stuffed in their sacks, and the men in black watched as their car sped down the dirt road. They would not forget soon: How ballsy of those girls, to steal at noon.

She told her father that she had stopped taking the pills. That they had made her more anxious than ever - more jittery, more fidgety, more obsessed with details. When he tried to force her back onto the prescription, she reacted the way any teenager in fear would - she ran. She ran with one backpack and a sandwich and left her cellphone at home, scaling the steps of a bus and counting how about seconds it took her to find an empty seat: Two.

The Closet War by Belinda Roddie She hides the truth in small groups, marching two by two, but she doesn't actually have anything to lose. She's quick to slip lies into the formation, the troops as ugly a reality as a loose tooth - once they tear away from the red line, it's all over. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, there is no way on God's green earth that this facade clicks. She puts mythos in uniform and equips her made up army with sticks, but tricks don't have sharp blades, or bullets that actually leave divots in burst skin. Dishonest stories don't usually have happy endings. She winds up spending thousands of dollars to cover it up - with martinis, with marriage, with children all tucked in their rows like artillery carted off to the next global gun show. Look how much the veins have grown in her forehead, spider webs of capillaries ready to blow. And blow her cover, too. She's been having sex with her neighbor for thirteen ye...

Look at her, all smiles and sequins, skirt and sashay up to the big old Hollywood stage. She was nominated for six awards, you see - for acting, design, directing, and a screenplay that read like poetry. And don't forget the visual effects and cinematography. She's a one woman show - a bombastic box office boon. Just imagine all the champagne glasses dropping when she waltzes into the room.

High School Crush by Belinda Roddie You sidelined me - I was already far removed from the center of combat - and you gave me something to smile at. You were in the middle of my vision, dealing karate chops with gentle precision to my heart, even though you didn't aim directly; it wasn't your mission. I couldn't figure out where to start. I was smitten with you. I knew that smitten meant "strongly attracted," but the way I reacted, you'd think I didn't understand the implications. I was fifteen. I wore my grandmother's class ring, a gift for my Catholic confirmation. So maybe the confusion made some sense, my thoughts clouded like filling my nostrils with burning incense. Everything still smelled so sweet. We didn't officially meet until a year later, in drama class, where I flailed in front of an audience, a shadow in search of a script, a poet who didn't know how to perform verse, and the theater blitz winded me. Sti...

Yep - looks like unfortunately updates on the OneWord website have gotten a bit spotty. So no new OneWord today. Oh, well!

Trinity by Belinda Roddie In the eyes of the Father, she seems lost, confused, wavering in the middle of this holy tomb of a room, a paper thin wafer glued to her tongue, waiting to be consumed, like a body eager for some scrap of warmth. She tries to pray in the pews. Angels and saints don't stick around this place daily, though their stained glass gaze lingers like the callused fingers of sandpaper sunlight. Not like the marble, or the carved wooden seats, or the carpeting as red and pulsing as Christ's last handful of heartbeats. In the eyes of the Son, her prayers create steam out of rain, and the ark of her ancestors is dry on the bank of a river that she's never rowed. He knows that her mental rosaries are just for show - the beads evaporate in her hands. They make dents when they finally land, divots in front of the altar. The priest, in the next room, remembers not to recite the same homily from the week before. He has already heard her confess...