My Cardboard Balcony

Your Tea-Stained Lips by Belinda Roddie Your tea-stained lips are nestled close to mine; they stimulate a war inside of me - like grape of wrath ripening on the wine - like silence clashing with cacophony - like cymbals crashing after the last storm has dissipated and the rain has stopped, and you're shaken by the noise and worn down that you don't notice the heart you've dropped (it still pulses, that heart - it belongs to you). Now I taste the steeped and subtle mint as I let all my thoughts pass over you and your soft body, like the clouds that tint the midnight sky - too far away to touch, unlike your hands, which I will fiercely clutch.

We Need To Talk by Belinda Roddie Reprimanding, yet fair: her platinum blonde hair and her searing stare, the kind that gets under your skin, irises flaring, the light separating into thin rays, just enough to slip under the fingernails and linger like splinters in your cuticles. Still, she's supposed to discipline you. Her voice is low, close to scolding, though not quite condescending yet. The tone is mellow, warm enough to settle in your lungs, condensing into vapor, making the air you breathe hot enough to create whole colonies of bacteria just from the hums behind her tongue. You can only leave when she excuses you, and for now, she's not done quietly abusing you, hands taunting your face without touching it - no pinching of the nose or pats on the cheek. You are left alone, disoriented, a confused child who was just taught a lesson. A lesson you don't remember in your native language, given by a woman who offers you bandages after scra...

The suit he wore was blue, and the necktie he had captured in a Windsor knot was orange. Complementary colors, I grant you, but the orange was so damn florescent that it almost glowed like a sunset - and not a warm one, either. I almost shielded my eyes when he walked into the office, grinning between bites of a maple old-fashioned doughnut, his cellphone already chiming repeatedly with new texts and alerts from his clients.

I Want To Be An Astronaut by Belinda Roddie If I shoot for the moon, I will aim for a crater so that the dust and shadows will soften my landing. And when I look up, I will see white confetti celebrating simultaneously both my rise and my fall. I have been so accustomed to crashing that I will forget not to look for the debris of my own pride, and when I see fireworks, I will always assume they are meant for someone else rather than my own cosmic entrance. My little rocket will whimper as its legs buckle beneath it, and I will carry its engine to where the Apollo 11 American flag once stood. The others remaining are bleached white, stripped of the patriotism painted on their drooping smiles. Their eyes are full of that same confetti. They, too, are not used to so many people watching. So many people wondering if you'll leave footprints. In the sparse moonlight, a show awaits those who still wander on a dark man's face. The stars make a circu...

Look at how the snow has quilted the plains despite the fact that it is April. It is a bubbling cauldron of turmoil in the Arctic Circle, and yet here we are, freezing in the midwest of North America. When will the seas rise high above to flood our coastal brothers and sisters? I see how thick and dark the glasses are that the elites wear. They blot out the truth from them. If only they could truly view the calamity.