Most read stories

Layers

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"... Sometimes I think I'm so close to knowing what it's all about, to knowing myself, and then sometimes everything seems so hopeless, as if I haven't learned a thing."

Forever Four-Eyed

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I'm a librarian. A reader. I identify as a four-eyed person. I've always worn glasses. I got my first pair in the second grade. It was a miracle! The blurry world I'd inhabited all my life suddenly came into focus. I could see the blackboard! I could read street signs! I…

A D O N I S

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They sprinkled me in the holes of Auburn Maine. They covered me in grain, and salmon colored sand. My shell had swirls of chartreuse, and chocolate painted on it. I was made from glass and Gods left eye. Picked and sorted through, we all landed into a tiny paper bag…

Three: A Heavenly Mansion

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She went up first, I followed, a respectful three paces behind. Now, I know what you’re thinking: I was perfectly placed to steal a quick, if innocent, glance, and she would never see. The house is a center hall colonial, and there are no mirrors on the s

Stones

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At the graveyard, the leaves had been raked into loose array....

A Clean Tent

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“No,” he says. A simple lie. “I -” He pushes the sleeping bag off of his legs. Their getaway reset was a mistake.

Filth and Splendor: A Love Story

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Solomon just makes people leak. Literally.

Quasimodo Casanova

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After shooing away the filthy pigeons and closely inspecting the bench, he squinted with his good eye at a second-page article on noise abatement headphones.

The Eleventh Commandment

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I never thought I’d miss the sound of church bells, reminding me of my sudden apostasy, faintly ringing over the rumpus where even the birds can’t get a word in edgeways.

Swimming with Whales

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The plan was this: We would take our first vacation. My husband and I would take our 2 ½-year-old son Ethan and 13-month-old son Jonas to Mystic, Connecticut, a 90 minute drive from our home outside of Boston. We would stay at the Hilton, which was right near the Aquarium,…

IT CAN, IT CAN, IT CAN

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A man jumped off the High Level Bridge this morning.

The Fergus Incident

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Fergus Winston, a former accountant from New York, finds himself mixed up in the middle of a trafficking operation in small town Iowa.

Luc

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Her wrinkles came into focus, the sort of old woman's face photographed for coffee tables and art galleries and corporate boardrooms, for prize juries and grant selection committees, and Luc searched his formidable memory for an exact match. Over the long, tedious…

Right Now

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I want to talk like Rose Tyler, and be whisked away by the strapping Docor, preferably in David Tennant form.

Interview With a Pimp

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He went to the switchboard and rang one of the rooms. I moved away to a discreet distance so he could make his pitch in private, and soon he came back to the desk front. "He d-didn't like it much, b-but he said to s-send you up. Room 412."

The Spoken World

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The spoken world is bigger than I had ever imagined it to be, wonderful and relentless and unforgiving, and to be a part of it was my grandest childhood fantasy. I don’t know what the world sees me as now, but inside I will always be a stutterer.

Stupidest. Film Director. EVER!

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["This is not a snippet of text. This is only a test."]

The Garden of Earthly Delights

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When I come to suck fresh raspberries' juice from your hair pressing the clasp of my mouth's purse on the oyster of your ear;

Tales from an Indiscriminate Record Collection

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45s I’ve kept wrapped in newspaper in the attic. These are all mine. Some doubling up in sleeves. Some pushing tears in the seams.

Rooftop

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People crawling up out of the chimney, then onto the roof, then sliding down it and off over the edge disappearing from view.

The Fuddy-Duddy Writer Reflects on her Fan(s)

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The Fuddy-Duddy Writer does not do wit.

MYTHO-THERAPY ON THE BLINK

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Once upon a time, not so long ago in Los Angeles, Jack and Jill Woodman’s father remarried.

That is That

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Alexander Ivanovich stuck out his leg and tripped Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev. Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev stood up, took two steps forward, stuck out his leg and tripped Alexander Ivanovich.

GRANDMA FLYNN

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She shoved a small bottle under her aprons and came towards me, darkening the passageway from “Ancestor” by Thomas Kinsella The night I heard the Banshee she passed away. In my screaming fear dada and mama woke. …

The Hiders

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The Kharal kept us safe, we knew, kept the colony functional in the oft belabored effort that was living our small, human lives surrounded by death, for in their ring of constant invisible protection, when they did not come, we thrived. It was not as tho

The Martians Are Coming

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"I read a cute animal story yesterday," I tell them. "And I was filled with rage. I can't live like this. There must be no more bears, or hamster-bears, or manatees, being hopeless and depressed. There must be no more cute animal stories—ever."

How?

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The poet paused Pen poised in hand A wrinkle on his brow He’d but to rhyme the final verse The only problem How?

Probability

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1: The Zero Product Property states that if a multiplied by b equals zero, then zero must equal a or b. Thus, to prove this theory, multiply a and b divided by a. Use the broken chord theorem to crease the zero by disrupting the circular movement of the skewed line. As a…

GOING NOWHERE

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you may meet the man of your dreams.

Love, a comet, omens and wings

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My love for him like wax wings/ so long they stretched eternal— beating in the sky, grazing peaks,