Most read stories

Tortoise

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Seven black and orange Tortoise-shell kittens nursed in a crate the day Sue returned from rehab, to her parent's Atlanta home.

What's Wrong With Stella by Starlight?

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Suzie went on to become an anchorwoman in Los Angeles after college. She had tiny bruises on her feet where she’d shoot heroin since she didn’t want tracks to show on her arms, where they’d ruin the effect of a little black cocktail dress

A Time for Peace

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When she opens the door, I say hi and introduce her to my friend, a bottle of J.T.S. Brown. She laughs and tells me to come on in before I fall down.

How to Forget

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Refuse to go to the church service, even though you already missed the funeral. Tell his mother something came up. Call his phone over and over, just to hear his voice, until his mother asks you to stop. Make a recording of his voicemail. Delete it an

Confiding in the Airsick Bag

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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.

Lethargy

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‘Your hands are very clean’ she said to the furniture salesman. His name was Morrison. "After Jim" Morrison Pentworthy. His father specialized in Doors.

Awakening

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What? No, no, where did my world go? I was in the middle of… something. What's going on? What's stroking my face?

Albert's Mother

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The stern tone of the chairwoman made him miss his mother, the snap of her accusations, the sting of her belt on the backs of his legs.

Human Frailty

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Conceptio culpa Nasci pena Labor vita Necesse mori

Sgt. Nelson, KIA

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. . . she didn’t bow her head.

Breakfast

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Wake up, stretch. Check the curtained windows for sunlight or that dreaded grey frame that forces the covers to come back up and the alarm clock to be set to ‘Snooze’.

Leox

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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..

Arcana Magi Cross - c.5

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They stood before the opened door, where cold vapor seeped out along their feet and chilled their bodies. The Avatars figured this was what the necromancer used to get inside.

New Moon

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circa the early 90s, Buzz Aldrin and my father had been invited to a dinner at someone's house on Bainbridge Island and gotten lost.

Treading Water

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I can tread water like this for months maybe longer

ROAD LESSONS

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"Do you have to call your brother a loser? He is not a loser and that was just uncalled for"

A Little Fishing

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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.

To Make Way for the Future

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It was the shock of black hair twisted into a long thick braid that got our attention and made us want to find meaning here. Albert thought he recognized the hair in the grave.

Unsaid

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whistling some blithering tune, trotting around the kitchen in his underwear with his ribs, a long row of meatless tragedies that screamed for something other than the meal he was making.

Anchored Leaves

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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…

Rude Awakening

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Vito suddenly found himself wide awake. He was unable to recall having fallen asleep or dreaming or awakening. It seemed he'd just entered bed, yet a glance at the windows told him it was already the middle of the night.

This is Why We Can Never Have Nice Things

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At age eleven, I murder the coffee table. I gouge with every available implement: thumbtacks, Lefty scissors, the plastic hand of my Barbie accomplice (who really should have known better). It is a slow death. In the end, there is nowhere to hide the body. When I am…

'The Good Life' Not by Bud Smith

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I'm trying to read a Poetry in Motion poem on there wall of a crowded electric train

Martyr

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The waitress says, “That’s a memory,” as the smoke dances around her head.

WE NEVER

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No news spreads faster than news of a death. Word of the death of a child can be heard simultaneously in a thousand places. . . the word spread by telephone, in back yards from clothesline to clothesline, with whispers in grocery stores, in the looks on faces stunned into…

Actor-Activist

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A dark-haired, handsome man adjusted the headset he was wearing, leaned toward a microphone, and eyed his host, a curly-haired man with a toothy grin, who sat up straight as he received a cue from his producer.

Universal Theory #1: The 3-Step Secret to a Good Life

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1. Think up problems that don’t exist 2. Realize, suddenly, that they don’t exist 3. Elation

I Scream

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she peeled back the white wrapper from around her ice cream sandwich slowly, methodically

Beckett not Joyce

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Gorgonzola. It's what she was to bring this time. Plumtree's potted meat. What it was last time.

Witness

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The violin hung on the wall after that, a witness.