1825 21 11
|
He hid in parks and abandoned apartment houses until his wounds healed. He ate nuts, berries, and seeds. A shy, gentle soul, he watched children playing on the monkey bars, and thought of his lost youth.
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18252118
|
When I died, she said, she was going to have me cremated and put my ashes in the cats’ litter box.
|
18251911
|
It's been sixteen days since I spoke with another soul. I don't mind much, but I know enough about people to know most would think I'm mighty odd. Muriel, for example. She'd be pissed as all get out. …
|
1825129
|
Harpo sits and looks at something I can't see. I drink beer and ask him questions. I ask him how they found the cancer. Backache, he says. He went to see a doctor.
|
1824148
|
It's not loneliness I'm afraid of. It's how I would be happy to be alone too much.
|
182432
|
The sand felt warm, the way it usually was on Saturday afternoons in Seaside Heights; face down on the beach under a hot July sun that burned my back and shoulders
|
18241710
|
Can you write a 250-word story without using the letter "e"?
Ruth's back is curving forwards, folding, softly caving into tomorrow.
|
182454
|
Her pudgy face, flour-coated and sugary and so life-nurturing in the past, had a different spark now, a searching look I’d seen as soon as she opened the door.
|
182462
|
1. Think up problems that don’t exist
2. Realize, suddenly, that they don’t exist
3. Elation
|
182411
|
The elevator door opened, and Tom ("The Baffler") Frank found himself confronted by Jesu bar Joseph, who opined: "You're WORTHLESS!" and recommended: "Why dontcha PULL your PANTS down, and CUT your COCK off!"
|
182300
|
In se'enties style serenading strut
A passin all the pretty birds in kin',
The feathered Stetson ‘clipsin crimson suit,
A whistlin Dixie blues ‘cross county-lines.
|
1823134
|
. . . she didn’t bow her head.
|
182320
|
A cloud of light, white smoke floated out of the driver’s side window. Nate and Zach sat on the front bench seat, talked, and puffed away. “Breath in and say Mom is coming,” said Zach.
|
182334
|
“Do you think she paints?”
“Her face, a little, But don’t you find her kind of bony?”
|
182231
|
Dizzy but still alive
Inside this conversation
I ask if you have a sister
And if she'll know me
If I'm with you.
|
182232
|
In row nine, there was a lady on the window seat. Seeing the potential of space between us, I asked, “Mind if I take this one?”
“Not at all” she said as if she hadn't a friend in the world, apart from the poor bastard now sitting in seat 9D.
|
1822183
|
she peeled back
the white wrapper
from around her
ice cream sandwich
slowly, methodically
|
182242
|
So it was cancer. And so he was screwed, royally screwed. He was screwed all the more because he knew how screwed he was. He had to carry the shame of knowing, as much as he wanted to deny it, that this had been his first thought when he found out about h
|
18223914
|
Where seldom is heard
an encouraging word
|
182263
|
|
182262
|
Whoever came up with the term kismet is an absolute moron. There isn't a single reason, or word, that can describe what exactly my brain has concocted in the face of him. No, kismet isn't what makes it happen. It's my own stupidity..
|
182263
|
Your finger quivers as it writes
Upon me words in water,
Words I cannot read nor drink
But feel them as you drink
Them with your tongue
|
1822115
|
i.More and more, for Megan LeMaster, each beginning was its own end. She couldn't bear to buy flowers or dresses that seemed too beautiful. Friendships formed, endured, gave out in a handshake. Each deed in life had an immediate, inescapable…
|
182154
|
Are you asleep? He says.
Wake up.
|
1821145
|
|
182111
|
What? No, no, where did my world go? I was in the middle of… something. What's going on? What's stroking my face?
|
18212215
|
The river’s not/
a river but/
a FEMA map/
of flooding probabilities.
|
1821159
|
The violin hung on the wall after that, a witness.
|
182112
|
Sawyer walked toward the lone house with the sentinel trees.
Behind him there were no tracks in the snow.
|
18211712
|
Conceptio culpa
Nasci pena
Labor vita
Necesse mori
|
