1721 18 19
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Where we live, at the edge of the foothills at the east edge of town, fire is always a worry during the summer, and this has been an exceptionally dry year.
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172163
|
I often thought about touching those slippery flames between my thumb and index finger.
|
1721117
|
when the surface of a photograph gets like this that it has gone blind
|
172131
|
We’re all competitive and drunk.
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172181
|
In between ketchup-covered fries, a Quarter Pounder, and a vanilla shake, catty comments, and lots of laughs, Marylou slipped in her announcement, a grenade in a rose garden. “I'm pregnant,” she said.
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1721109
|
The tiny green light flashing in the lawn of an apartment building one night that caught Roberta’s attention while we were walking home from Café Vita.
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172110
|
After nine months, I was granted early parole...
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172111
|
“I will become a respected novelist!” proclaimed Billy.
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1721177
|
Through its branches we saw a couple. Teenagers, narrow and pale, two young birch trees, their roots twisted, submerged in the water.
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17201413
|
I formed a snowball in my bare hands. Hard as a rock, I let her fly.
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1720118
|
“Sometimes when I feel the urge to create, I don’t know whether to grab my paints, my camera, my guitar or my pen.”
“You could have sex,” her friend, sitting in the desk next to hers, joked.
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17201512
|
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.
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172021
|
so one time the Holy Ghost come down to Stumptown
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172000
|
|
1720173
|
My swinging purse sent saucers tinkling to the tile and the copper-headed waitress flew over, swooping on the shatter, clutching clean forks like a handful of flowers.
|
172075
|
He drifted for years: No forwarding. No phone.
|
172062
|
I flip up my hoodie, pull the string tight across my lips until it cuts into them, pull tighter, saw back and forth until blood warms the hairs on my chin.
|
1720104
|
So, like I said. Da. I have dealt with the men, when I was a lap dancer. The men they need the….manipulations. I have good hands. They want me to see them naked, their power. Here it is only the women. The massage, the facial, the waxing...
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17191513
|
Solitude is such an excellent alternative to suicide.
|
171991
|
She was skinny and with breasts like a wound up skein of yarn.
|
1719108
|
Because if they’re wavering, it's about the coin, always about the coin.
|
17192212
|
I liked the taste in my mouth, mint and cigarettes and fresh and filthy.
|
17191312
|
|
171900
|
that is a fair description of our family if I add the disclaimer that the girls are whores and we don’t have much in common.
|
171974
|
She said he was missing the whole point: it was a decoration, not an actual pillow. You were supposed to place it somewhere artful.
|
171822
|
That's what friends told him.He looks at the unpacked boxes around the apartment, hoping he hadn't packed any of her stuff in his haste.
|
171872
|
It’s not just the mailman. It’s the logo on the mailbox down the street. It’s the uniform. It’s any man or woman in the whole unsettling profession.
|
171851
|
She takes her hamburgers medium rare and the pickles remind her of the taste of last night's penis before she stuffed the stranger's apologies in a jar.
|
17181615
|
....the first/
in a long history of indignities.
|
171811
|
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