Most read stories

EMDR

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She called it EMDR, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Basically, it means training a part of your brain to longer associate trauma with a specific side of the brain. This meant that she had to direct all traffic of the repressed memory to a new…

a nice girl is like powder

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I remember mad strong words out of a teenager, fresh from the shower without a blouse: First! He will be my age, period! He will be the first to walk me to my room as my fear crashes to earth, final, considered. And I will be the first to milk the w

This Is Why I Write

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I do it for fun

What the Bay Broke

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This summer they had reached their fifth anniversary, the landmark they’d dubbed the Bacchanal year. Instead of exchanging gifts made of wood, they’d bought expensive wines and champagnes and emancipated their bodies of clothing for two straight days. The

Dead End

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She'd still rest her fingers on your back, and her smile still lit the lantern of your soul.

A Piece of the Sky

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For the briefest moment, she was part of the sky. She hung there. Frozen. Suspended. Arms outstretched. She thought maybe she could take off flying, if she strained against gravity hard enough. She would soar into the pale blue until she reached the clouds. They …

We call them the Removal Men

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They came early and parked up, under cover of the night and the giant oak. I only know this because people told me afterwards. Watching us, they were. It was six o'clock before they smashed their way in, scaring the three of us out of our wits. Baby Billy screamed the place…

~the scent of dead roses~

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i killed a poetic boy yesterday. the old ladies in theshadows swore at him when he was walking home proud ashell with a new pocketknife. they told him we dienext week so laugh like you got limes for balls. hecalled them drippy old vultures in his native tongue.they didn't…

A World of Possible Flowers

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"There are many dark places;but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."--J.R.R. Tolkien If the love never came you must have been Dragging your feet. If the hatred carved your…

Cogito Zero Sum

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When you encounter a body laying on the road, drive over it.

Indulgence

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I crave the confines of the convent

Assiduity Twenty Two

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Warning: reader beware, there's sex in the air.

John Ruskin doing a Swan Dive

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She used her right breast. Lifted it to her chin, aimed at the can, and shoved it down as hard as she could.

Writer's Envy

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You may think you've tasted envy, but yours was just a sour sip of wine at a civilized wine-tasting. Mine is bottom-shelf, well-brand gin in a biker bar with miss-the-urinal piss stains on the floor.

One of Us

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“We’re starting to get into weather control,” Mark said. “Can you really do that?” Rachel asked, trying to sound supportive and not skeptical. “There are people out on the west coast in Seattle, who’ve been experimenting with it,” Mark said. “Bec

Silver Moon Glimmer

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I walked around the mountains and the gravel roads that once were my home. The rain made tiny rivers in the clay that ran hard and fast, and I splashed in them until my feet were saturated and my hair was stuck to my face and in my mouth salty and I cried

Banging My Head Against the Garage Door of Religion

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The villagers smash in a garage door with their heads, causing some to bleed from the ears and mouth.

The Yellow Room

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...the knives she laid out on the porch before her husband left her, washed and dried, set neatly by copper pennies.

Confederates

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I knew I spoke out of turn when I asked my father's old friend Charlie Jobe what he thought would come of moving to the veterans' camp, or "Village of the Deranged", as the newspaper has since taken to calling it. That was their description after all the

Time Passed to Time Present

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Four Quartets is a slender book which/ can be read with intensity in its entirety

The Fereigner

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So, I escaped from the Iron Curtain out of Czechoslovakia, as was called then. That was in 1956 I escaped, and came to Chicago where all of you were for some time already. I know our grandparents came over in early part of century, but my part of family

Concubine on the Ginza Line

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so I tighten hands with my castaway and say/you failed to impress in your folded peacock dress

Light Eyes

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Once, when he had been married for a year, she sent him a card which said, "If you have seen a cat smoke a pipe, you have got it made." There was an illustration of a big, black panther, standing up on its hind legs, smoking what looked like a big tub of

Aged Beef on the Senior Meat Market

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Burger King has rekindled Flame, its $4 broiled-meat-scented spray.

Spiced Nuts

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There are lines// across time, beyond the tug/ of elections and fashion,/ beyond the turbulence of history

Stillness

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You were sitting on dark leather meringue, wearing slit ivy, epilated thighs sliding through, roots showing beneath your anaemic skin, fighting with the pale bluegreen of your veins. Quills extended from your left hand, bent about 10.2 degrees or so.

Woman On A Bicycle

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And the ocean was black and green and blue—as your dress that clung to your body’s curve. Round as the bend of the water trailing the false line of the shore.

A Desperate Tweak

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I have two of those hand exercisers jamming the tray and keeping it locked in place

Cat Tales - a 55 word story

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My spooky cat got out again. Under the deck she ran. Out came the hose that chased her about. Fur spiked, tail pointing, yowling, she hissed at me, and back in the house she pranced. It's been two days now. She slithers out for food after…

Sleepy Time for Jimmy

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Now comfy is as comfy does, but when sleeping strange, please accept a wide range of cradle, crib, cave.