My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie So...it's come to this. A free coffee drink and a downtown adventure searching for sweets. Good friends convening over brushes and imagery. Red wine spilled on a watercolor painting. Lemon chiffon cake and a right corner headache. Hearts ripped out of artichokes and spaghetti and meatballs. This was your very happy birthday. You created a woman in a pink dress on a small canvas and taped her world down so it wouldn't fly away. She had orange hair and always reached out for the metallic good sun above her head. Fingers grasping the celestial seemed to be a frequent theme of your work. Outside, it was raining. The barn cat was soaked but still claimed you, anyway. The red wine became its own paint across a blue cat's forehead. We spread the pink and purple across its body - both of us. The barn cat never saw the picture of the blue cat. But the blue cat smiled. This week's prompt was provided by Mike Wallach.

Hi, folks. So, I'm back at my in-laws' place. We got through most of our second to last deadline. I'm teaching Lord of the Flies. It's my wife's 28th birthday tomorrow. We're gonna have a watercolor party and stuff. So...bye. Have a great night and a great weekend, everyone.

Wait Until After They Sing by Belinda Roddie Susie's birthday cake's surrounded by barbed wire. Back off, Taylor.

The Dreadful Fog by Belinda Roddie The dreadful fog is thicker than a stew left to congeal across a drying bowl, and though I wander through it to find you, I fear I will be lost until I'm old and gray and decrepit. I hold the keys to many doors, but I don't know which ones, and I certainly can't be put at ease when the windows are shut, latches done and tight. The other shadows in the mist appear to know their way around, so I ask them for directions. They turn to wisps as soon as I let words fall. Will I die in this dreadful fog? Well, it's hard to say, since I no longer recognize the day.

You and I, we connected on a beyond a molecular level. We established something deep, something broad - like developing new spines under water when the pressure was pushing into our backs just right. We made new shapes out of our tongues, and eventually, we communicated with God. But God was sleeping in the sand on an island north of us, and his skin was charred from the lightning that grew fingers in the summer storm.