1591 1 1
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Later, your father stared, confused, at the empty spot where the wall paint layers ended in the shape of the old machines. He stopped coming in.
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159131
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It was cloudy, the way he liked it -- no baking in the sun. People passed occasionally. He sniffed at the joggers, “Health Nuts,” he dubbed them. He hadn’t exercised since his last high school gym class.
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159164
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It's that day in July when you feel really bummed because you can't find your favorite white sleeveless shirt that you wear on the hottest days of the yea
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159000
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I figure maybe I’m mostly alone; they are all running down staircases or falling down fire escapes, some of them naked, some of them with towels, mostly probably naked though.
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159087
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159096
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THIS is what happened — the dead went into remission. Dated may 10 2010. Or it could have been some other day. They were going to be restored later. That's what we were being told. The dead were being given stones to mark their remission. They were getting…
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159055
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awoke in confusion, fear and hurt never seen before that day a year past
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159011
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Roanne hungered. Memory had ruled her forever. Shards really, edged like machetes: daddy, whose fingers had eyes in the dark. Momma, ensconced in the shadows. Inside the church, those pairs of short…
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1590125
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I walked along the beach today, and there I saw them all; including the latest lost: little Tiven, Tommy, Michaela & my Paul. Grandma painted at her easel, set upon the dune. Uncle Eddie bent in half, laughing like a loon, Oliver growled…
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159000
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"One-upmanship" is a strategy for defeating an opponent somewhat unfairly without actually cheating.
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159065
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I wake up on the edge of the mattress, teetering. The dog is looking at me funny.
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159030
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His mother named him Far because she had high hopes for him
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159043
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The songs that she used to sing to him still dance in his head while he wrangles equations. The stars in the cosmos spell out her name.
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159062
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Sometimes one person's shelter is another person's storm.
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1590910
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For instance, my sister's husband. If I say brown socks, yellow boxer shorts, fishnet undershirt. If I say plastic bag and two tepid beers. And a voice that glides to falsetto when he: you're a tad too obscene for my taste, Julia, while he tries to light the filter end of…
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158900
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The sound built up, louder and louder causing birds and insects to fly into the air. Then it stopped.
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158921
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“They say she lives alone out there.” “What, like out in the woods?” “Not like way back in a cabin or anything, but in a little house out there off the road. I'm not even sure she has a car.” “What, does she…
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1589146
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She drinks a chocolate martini. I fold myself up and slide into her pocket.
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158932
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I remember when I first came to California, I heard a mockingbird sitting in a tree, calling out in the names of other birds. It was down in L.A. I was staying at my brother's house in San Gabriel and driving in every day to the campus at UCLA to go to s
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158965
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She stood there with her back to me and her dress around her ankles.
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158900
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When we talked about the lasagna, we were, I see now, talking about different things. I.e., I was talking about lasagna, and you were talking about almost everything but. You weren't talking about the dry, burnt noodles or…
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158913
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After he got on one knee, and she said, I do. After they watched the televised bombs disappear the city. After everyone fell asleep. After shock and awe, him and her making love…
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158920
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Vegas is turning out to be my kind of town. Easy money, free booze, and everyone is too overstimulated to realize I’m broadcasting right into their noggins.
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158900
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Over the stained fence the spectres flew and that is where the rain was turning colder and colder in the time when the trees had become mostly bare.
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1589118
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None of this is real, he says, and the path slopes down to a house that is possibly haunted. One always looks in such windows, one cannot not look at the predictable detritus of another's failure, a queer satisfaction, a fairy's dust. But no, not real, none of it. And…
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158977
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They blew in the doorway of the café at the French Hotel like two sparrows chasing each other. Their wings down in the dust, unheeding any danger in their hunger for each other. I knew the man who was about to become her husband, so maybe this was her las
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158977
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You've been given some really cruel thoughts that are not your own.You've been given some really stupid sets of rules which are impossibleto follow. You can learn to manage for yourself. Remember who youwere before they told you who you were. You've been trainedsince birth…
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158951
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Two summers later, the ritual began. Carol left her house at midnight, having served her husband and daughter a heavy dinner that left them caged in their sleep. She was like a thief working in reverse: she rose from bed with her husband’s first snore,
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158971
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My mother was Irish as Paddy's pig. So all her family. Lovely people they were. Also, seldom seen among the Folk; stone cold sober. My father's family; Bavarian German. Bavaria's the wrong side of the German tracks. Frankfort people laugh at Bavarians as people in…
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158942
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Had this been a film, I’d have seen you at once. Extreme close-up: my finger on the green button that opens the door to the park. Long shot: my leaving my bike at the entrance. Slow shot: my walking down the narrow stone path.
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