2557 6 1
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“Your children are beautiful,” she said, handing back his wallet after removing several bills. Her mouth was fringed by bitten-off melon lipstick, a calm kind of mad. She told him to call her Sally, “like the song McCartney rips his lungs on.” She…
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255688
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Public voice when he's tense.
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2555125
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“How much is stuff worth? Stuff man! Bling! Cargo! STUFF! What's it worth to you? It ain't worth a shit, man! Clean clothes! Comfortable shoes! A ride! Those things are important! But they’re only stuff.
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2554102
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The couple drove away at the end of the late show. They crashed sooner or later, often with fatalities to the woman cuddled up against her illicit lover.
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255322
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It's the way an earnest five-year-old boy pronounces every single letter as he whispers. Something about octopuses, something else about peas.
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25531714
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The first time I see her, she is slouched in a tire swing, pushing off with one foot and dragging the other beneath a dying pecan tree that probably hasn't made a nut in 20 years.
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25535727
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She sits at home, on the floor of the kitchen, bathing her stuffed animals in molasses to match the ones on the news.
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255352
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The Six-Second Rule
They come to the new world, but bring the old world with them – the six-second rule.
When their bagel drops face down on the café floor, apparently it’s the old world six-second rule that applies, instead of our own
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25522217
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I stare, out a dirty window, / into the sanitary blackness.
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255294
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I hate walking into restaurants and cafes by myself to meet someone. I always feel awkward, as if no one will claim me. I'm hanging on the threshold now for an agonizing few moments scanning the room until I see my friend.“Hi!” she says, waving her cup at…
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2551149
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You can't always get what you want, and fortunately, that's sometimes a good thing.
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255083
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Figures are a strip tease.
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25501812
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Exhaling slowly and deeply, Tyler settled his back in against the saddle of the tree's broad trunk and let it all go.
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255084
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Tell me your hero and I'll tell you what's cooking with you...
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255032
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The pieces of bread dipped us humans in cheese,
the cheese made by cows from our milk.
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25493513
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She walks through the house she’d bought. The filth and the stench of mould nearly make her retch. Dead fleas line the windowsills, the dressers, the floors.
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254898
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I'm afraid to find out what my spirit animal is
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25481211
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I was having festive sex flashbacks and wasn't thinking sharply.
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254897
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This little town lost its mill...
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254832
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We are the generation who tattoo our stories on our bodies, who pierce what appears impenetrable; we fly our scars like pennants.
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254863
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We buried her upright, in the stance of warriors.
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25483019
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He’s hooked on the pinball / excitements of adolescence
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254754
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O’Malley imagined the blissful, narcotic innocence of Toby’s world where soft-shell crabs crawled into people’s mouths and hummed a happy tune as they were chewed and swallowed.
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254721
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“He had emerged from slavery, -- not the worst slavery in the world, not a slavery that made all life unbearable, rather a slavery that had here and there something of kindliness, fidelity, and happiness, -- but withal slavery, which, so far a human aspiration…
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254711
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The first morning we met—I remember the rain, soft the way I like it—was a series she later attributed as a fourteen-frame sunrise.
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25462215
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The Cheshire grinning/
moon cups itself to capture/
Venus should she fall.
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2545176
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The Boys The Boys, they call my brothers in the neighborhood, or Those Boys. The Taylor Boys. Sometimes, Mom calls them Thing One and Thing Two, like in The Cat in the Hat. Those bad boys. Nobody has brothers like my brothers, kicked off the school bus, barred…
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254384
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I'm Icarus in Brueghel's painting. My wings as it turned out were made of wax. Mothers, tell your daughters this truth. You cannot fly so close to the sun.
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2543366
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I do not trust Shay anymore.
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25421712
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