2585 12 6
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It’s about 4:30 when the phone rings. I look at the display and see it’s home.
“Hey,” I say picking up.
“I hate you,” says Jules.
“I hate, you, too,” I say. My co-workers don’t even blink. They’ve heard this before.
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258422
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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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2582176
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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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258132
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It was one of those dinner parties where everyone had had a little too much to drink, and the conversation around the table had grown more . . . shall we say, spirited.
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258163
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We buried her upright, in the stance of warriors.
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258132
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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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2581179
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When Ryan isn’t around, those of us who know him lament that he peaked at 17, at Disney World.
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258011
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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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25793114
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257821
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Simon Ridley only had one special power. Whenever he walked into a room, an awkward silence would descend.
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257800
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Like gymnastics, shoplifting is a discipline of youth.
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257787
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A brief commentary on the uselessness of endings.
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257771
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If you run into my Aunt Lucille, put your head down and keep walking. She knows when a person is going to die. She knows when a fatal disease is heading your way and she doesn't keep it to herself. She told my best friend, Mary Lou Pierce, don't bother
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25762310
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'Hey, are you supposed to be from a cartoon or something?' said the Grim Reaper. I had to take a big drink before I could reply. I didn't know what to say, so I said 'Could I see your watch, please?' He looked down my dress while he thought about it.
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25751712
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25743720
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Make cartography with your mouth...
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257354
|
my exposed
flu-ridden head
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25723621
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The young boy picks up a coin that has rolled to his feet. It is warm, too warm considering the cold air streaming around him.
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25722321
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The debits and credits of life have been recalculated. You are not due tax; you are owed a trapeze. It turns out you have a natural gift for hanging upside down, knees to the clouds.
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257100
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“Ah, there’s the Tasmanian tiger,” the visitor says in an American accent, maybe midwestern. “It’s called a ‘thyracine,’ right?”
“Thylacine, yes.”
“Un huh. Thylacine. Extinct now, isn’t it?”
“Oh! Let’s hope not
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257131
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There are gestures, unmarred by the words put to them after all has failed. When Y. stopped you from talking to apply lip balm to your dry lips. Or she sidled up to you to read what you had written for her. When you lay on the grass together she put her head on…
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25701311
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Her mother dressed her like a little girl would dress a doll.
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257060
|
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2570209
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Eighteen-layered canvases were prized by both of them, regardless of whose work appeared on top.
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2569187
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This is the only time she feels she can be herself.
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256900
|
The water burst into droplets of rain and fell on top of her. Chisame laughed out loud, a joy that overwhelmed her as she repeated this feat over and over.
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25671212
|
Columbus Avenue, I’m the tense union of poor city rich city/
gentrification.
|
256711
|
Not everybody sees Father. Not Mom, not Dad, not even my little brother, Andre, and he see lots of things. Me, I need to.
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25661110
|
he scans the headlines of the tabloids as he waits to pay. “Dog Accidentally Shoots Man With His Own Gun, Elvis's Hidden Extraterrestrial Daughter, Swedish Man Bursts Into Flames on Train Platform.”
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25663918
|
Lined up like ghosts on the front lawn, the second-hand porcelain fixtures had embarrassed her.
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