My Cardboard Balcony

We Played Croquet by Belinda Roddie We played croquet after a tea or two, our shoes skidding on the manicured lawn, the crack of mallets against orbs both blue and red breaking the silence of the dawn. We did this every sunrise, and once we had woken up the neighbors, we retired back to our bed to warm our chilled bodies under a handmade quilt. You had been hired as a receptionist, and I, poor fool continued my vain efforts to inspire the adolescents I taught at the school. "Kiss me," I said, and yet, I was too tired to kiss back. The remainder of the day was gone to me after playing croquet.

"Hey, man. I got the pizza." I look up from my newspaper. "Wow," I intone. "That was quick. Slow day at the Big Pepperoni?" "Nah," replies Marcia with a grin. "I went to Slice Of Life instead. Their pizza's cheaper, but also way better. Dig in!" Skeptical, I stand up and retrieve some cheese goodness from the box. Already, the dairy actually looks real; good start.

Ooh La La by Belinda Roddie Once, I laid eyes on a girl so beautiful, she stopped my breath, crammed it into a jar as it stayed suspended in mid-air, a perfect freeze frame for the cinema. Ideal for our tête-à-tête, our rendezvous, our secret ballet that we danced with pirouettes and plies - don't watch us, sil vous plait. Have you ever noticed that when you talk about love, you dunk your entire head in a basin full of French? All the beautiful whims and fancies of a Romance language that can't count from seventy to one hundred properly. The words make your head spin because you think the meaning of your message is stronger when you have vertigo. You don't consider the fact that you're just dizzy. Swooning over her as you sip your aperitif and adjust your chic beret and you imagine yourself in a film noir, and the femme fatale struts toward you, all haute couture and pretending to be an ingénue. She smokes, because of course she does - ...

A Cabin For The Hopeless Romantic by Belinda Roddie There's a cabin for the hopeless romantic. It rises like a loose tooth from a speckled gum, a red passion post in the middle of no man's land - with trees. Lots of trees. This was where I carried you, through the smallest of towns, over dry creek beds and fallen, useless timber, past abandoned rope swings and punctured tires from cars nobody drives anymore. Like the beige pick-up that smelled like pine sap and old flannel and dog hair - because the one who adored the joy ride in the back of that jalopy the most was the family boxer. There's a cabin for the hopeless romantic. Inside, the ugly black and white couch we sat on years ago is gone; instead, there's lounge furniture misconstrued as "classy," or containing "rustic charm." The record player has been replaced, vinyls tucked away like sleeping octogenarians, dreaming about the needle tracing their smiles with music. You...

I find her swaying, upright, in the dining room, with all the lights on, all the candles lit, and all the windows open - which sweeps in the rain like wet, translucent confetti, making itself at home in our tiny domain. I approach her; she's asleep. Of course. This is not the first time I've seen her in this state. And when I touch her, she moans. She is, at first, incoherent. I do not understand her. "Um...pardon, love?" Then she becomes insistent; frustrated, even. "I am STEEPING the fucking TEA!"

Dynasty by Belinda Roddie Last time you said you loved me, I swore to you that I would upend your world like a chessboard, checkmate the king so the queen could take control of this glorious realm. I held stars in both my hands and let them burn my skin, each follicle of hair left on my flesh bursting into miniature fireworks before descending like strings of phoenix feather confetti. You told me to break my own teeth and patch them with steel, replace my spine with a lightning rod, stand outside in the middle of a storm and let Mother Nature kiss me so hard that my body flopped like a fish. I flipped tables in empty bars, drank absinthe and poison and developed an immunity to both. I dodged the harder contraband, but you managed to slip ecstasy in the form of a touch into my cup of decaffeinated tea, and suddenly, I was more awake than I had ever been in the last seven years. I was supposed to be revolutionary. I was supposed...