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Before the bills, before the fighting, before the need to blame something, there was a moment blown empty in the span of one doctor’s breath, a moment where bar nights and weekend benders had no meaning, a moment where the future was as blank as the bac
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184410
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Inside my high-rise studio apartment there are only three locations where Crane Man can't see me. The bathroom is one—although he watches me go in and he watches me come out. Crane Man does a lot of watching. Sometimes it seems he spends more time looking…
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116910
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140611
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She clutched her fat rolls and tugged on a pant leg. "I'm so embarrassed! You caught me on a bad day!"
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172410
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He was the tall, whippy type. Dangerous.
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116511
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She was, they said, everyman’s armful;
Bedding down with her was most likely harmful.
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185611
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maybe if I bat my lashes just right, or look prim enough to fly, you just might touch me tonight, and the dream will pop and fizz and I will wake somewhere, your hands smoothing these lines of worry away.
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102111
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As soon as he neared his neighborhood newsstand, handed over the exact change and had The New York Times in his hand, Irving switched from feeling he had no choices, to feeling he had a future.
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144112
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My brother used to hang a pair of panty hose over his fireplace before Christmas. He said all he wanted was for Santa to fill them ..
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69510
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It was a gesture on their part, an act with meaning;
they didn’t care about country or science; their love
was their art, their art was their love.
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146511
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President Kennedy’s national physical fitness program tried to reverse the incoming tide of obesity, but for many it was too late.
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118411
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“Shane, will you turn off the lights?” Jean asked. “Film really is much better with the correct lighting.” “I believe you,” Shane said while he switched off the lights, blanketing the room in complete darkness. The large TV on the…
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101911
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the wiggly word / floats toward the crowd
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130611
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One winter day, walking home from work because his old Honda Civic refused to start out of sheer laziness, Martin found the cat in the alley behind his apartment building. It was terribly thin, with a swollen belly. It twirled around his legs, pleading with big…
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176610
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It was stubborn early winter, when everyone was cold but went outside anyways, rubbing red fingers and shuffling feet.
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124011
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What I'm going to do is grab this eight-year-old fellow down the block, and declare him a candidate for this Presidential campaign. I'll be his campaign manager, and our whole message will be based on the First Streetlight platform. It's old school but very…
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127710
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We are driving towards New Jersey, my husband and I, to pick up our seventeen-year-old daughter who is visiting her father for the weekend. As we drive there, I am suddenly reminded of how much I used to love my ex-husband, particularly when I was sevente
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145511
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The night is very clear and unusually cold. We are so near to the star that its light banishes the darkness that tries futilely to extinguish it. A small village twinkles in the foothills to our east. The cry of a lost sheep cuts the night like a blade
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164710
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They're bound to wonder what sort of offspring we'll hatch. We've done the tests, we are cross-fertile.
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149911
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Zorro lived in his mother’s basement until he could get back on his feet.
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126710
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“Do you have a job? Are you going back to school,” I asked, you know, because I’m hip like that.
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98311
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The tuna fish sandwiches were laid out the way they had always been; they were cut into triangles, with wet paper towels between them. They stayed that way over an hour, untouched, aside from a dimple the size of my cousins finger to test the softness. …
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132711
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In the vaultwhere no one had daredsince your first stillborn screamsI swept out your deadThe gnawing thingsboneless and dustyand stinking of churchesYou came to me thenand I took youthere in the shadowsunder the tree on the grassnear the reeds by the lakeI dived in your…
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132412
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I was sitting at my desk at work and couldn't figure out why it felt like a person with a very weak grip was trying to strangle me. Then, I realized I was wearing a scarf.
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141111
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In September of that year, our neighbor Wayne had this idea that he could get rich by selling groceries Amway-style, and he booted his 12-year-old boy out of his own bedroom and put up shelves loaded with packages of spaghetti, cans of roast beef, soda po
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107011
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What else could I be doing right now,Besides lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling,Looking for patterns in the colors and lines on the tiles?Looking for you,Immobilized,Succumbed to the siren song you sing.Lured to slavery,Yet you are free,Wild,Unable to be…
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83411
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I have things that I should do
but I will lie abed with you
in homage to our deaths last night.
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323311
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I started the fire. I started the fire in my room. I started the fire in my room because I was cold. I figured something small, in an old oil drum I kept in there, and no one would get hurt.
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156110
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The old man’s face is worn and tired, his nose and cheeks tinted red over his pale black skin from the frosty January winds blustering through town. He looks more than half frozen, which I don’t find surprising.
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144412
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May 1890 Rifle, COLORADO Only pressure can change one thing into another. In terms of time, the…
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