1489 3 2
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I could smell a bold combination of cheap perfume, stale smoke, and sex excreting from her weathered pores. The bus engine hummed as we climbed a winding road. She scratched her neck and tried to finger comb through her knotted hair. I caught a glimpse of
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148974
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I don’t know what to do with all this money flowing from my books.
It’s burning a hole in my literary pocket.
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148931
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"She saw they were absorbed in making faces at each other with a smartphone app that enlarged a mouth."
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148965
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Ivan was used to explosions, but this was high in the sky. He was on his back between tall sunflowers that grew infinitely in all directions. The blast made the flowers bow their heads. Bits of debris fell from the blue sky, some shiny, trailing fire or smoke. The boy…
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148965
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Resting bitch face strikes again.
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14891310
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You should never have believed your daddy when he said a man with half a dog was better off than a man with no dog at all.
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1489108
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The best thing about being a cowboy is the cows.
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148977
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A new philosophy stirs in its surgery.
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148997
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Out in the world again, pretending to belong.
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148911
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On that balcony, on every other day, she practised her other, more worldly religion - gardening, specifically sunflowers.
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14891910
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1489107
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For you have waited. And waited and waited. And soon your slice of bread will be ready.
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148900
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Ever since they switched from paper scripts to the little rubber balls branded with code I have been inundated with sickness.
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148854
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Facebook just hit me with an ad for coping with memory loss, probably because I just turned 63. As far as my favorite social media site is concerned, I am now an Old Lady. When I asked my Facebook pals who are also Seniors what kind of promotions have been turning up…
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148852
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“I would like to keep my head, at least for a few more nights. Didn't you say we were gonna have sex one of these days? Isn't that in the manual?”
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148831
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The TV projects from an insect arm. It has the face of my ex-husband, smiling and void. I like to set small fires and inhale them.
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148820
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You held my hand when I hit the ground and told me the shakes would start soon.
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148831
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Nothing is ever hoarded in our house, everything is eaten.
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148821
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My buddy had been in the computer business, a systems analyst. Surely there would be some mention of him online. But there was nothing. Nothing, that is, until I saw the obituary.
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14881511
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Early Spring, 1075, Northumbria: Judith, too ashamed to speak, too angry to cry, waves her handmaiden away. She wants no food. Wind drives icy rain across the thickness of…
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148894
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In this lab, where I work 40 hours a week,
live the ghosts of questions asked.
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148831
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The blackout lasted longer than anyone thought. From my fifth story window, the whole city seemed to shut down. I heard noises above me. How could it be?
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1487114
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He is leaning back against a pillar watching the dancing; a spectator to joy – both planned and spontaneous – that’s unfolding in bodies fourteen and fifteen years old in front of him.
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148764
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We became The World Famous Shadow Puppet Theater because we thought that the best way to become world famous was to act as though we already were.
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1487104
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The next day I can’t recall at all, a waste, like the flash of twenty years of my life, faces that pass you like comets in some erogenous unnamed zone of night, but they got me in some isolation room with my wrists in leather restraints.
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14871810
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I loved without marriage and the men loved without divorce and we loved a twenty-four-year-old eating and how gracious she shone over a tame bottle of beer.
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148762
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It was only two days before Christmas. Jonathan remembered his mother crying.
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148721
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On the other pillow is a ladybird which escaped from a dream. It reminds me of when I was a tiny red polka dot. And then bigger, and other colours. And then… I stare at the ceiling, searching its soul for little things. The ladybird touches my arm, whispers…
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148731
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Wall talks to wall. One has a clock, the other a window, the third a cupboard with bandages etcetera. The fourth a door that opens and closes a thousand times a day.Chair is across from chair. Occasionally the one looking for care picks the wrong one to sit in, and there is…
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148742
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To be a backup dancer for Billy Ocean; that's all. I had chubby legs like a baby. They turned out akwardly as if I had broken hips but mum said it was just the way I came out and I would grow out of it.
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