2276 14 5
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And on nights like those I conjure Martha's childhood, a little girl who could make the whole world fall in love with her, with those goddam big seashell eyes, enticing adults to fall into a blue-green sea that never ends, never promises survival.
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227600
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Pussy’s eyes narrowed, her dark, luxurious fur quivering on her back. “How can you say such a thing! It’s not true.”
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22762112
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227500
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Her letter ends with her best words: No one will ever love you like I do. Beneath, she draws a heart, sad eyes, two jewel tears. Yours forever, Dawn. Hole by hole, not to wake her sister, she pulls the paper free, creases, folds again, then cuts…
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22753515
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No jobs except drinking...
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227554
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Valeria never whistled. Nor did she approve of people who did. One thing she had learned in her sixty-seven years was that people who whistled were crass. Butchers whistled. So did peasants.
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227573
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My daddy made all these gold records on the walls, died, and left me to run BadSmack Media, even if I could only manage to run it aground.
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22752017
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My glasses fog up every time I go to collect her from the pool. I'll never get used to glasses. When my sight got suddenly worse the day she was born, I didn't tell anyone. As she turned from baby to child, my love for her grew, and my world got smaller,
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227572
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Frank must have said "don't touch" about a million times over the course of the day
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22751712
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The Gothic-filigreed gate creaks as a guard closes it behind the little girl in the ruffled dress. Standing there in the morning fog, on the sidewalk outside the reform school, she looks remarkably like Shirley Temple. Dimpled, chubby face. Pretty, party dress. Her…
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227467
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In study hall Brandon sat like a little faggot so I said “Hey faggot.”“That's right, faggot. Don't look at me. I don't like faggots looking at me. I don't want their faggot eyes on me, faggot.”Bell rang and he walked like a faggot and held his books…
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227462
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It’s two o’clock in the morning, and I’m lying in bed, wide awake, drenched in sweat. I know what I need–a Thin Mint cookie–but I don’t know where I’m gonna find one.
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227400
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The warmth flowed around her, and her heart beat at a calming pace. She felt as though the heat bathed her like water and felt her body cleansing within it.
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22732112
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...you pile into your Mercury and barrel down the street, the air smells like sea, the night goes forever...
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2273119
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oh, sure i’m still running around like a heads-up/off/prophet/profit/fit trying to cut off my very own de/(con)instruction and all other sordid a•void•able & available /a-Babel-Trumpish towers of post & toastmodern doom/daze/haze
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227352
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It’s true that there are many accounts of fascinating Amish dinnerware, but none is more interesting than Samuel Stoltzfus’ Divining Plate, forged in 1881.
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2273207
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There are hundreds of fireflies crackling along the tree line and the old stonewall.
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227352
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It was a forgettable face, to be sure. Neither ugly nor beautiful, she looked like any one of a million American women. She could have been headed anywhere, but at that moment, she wanted to go to 14-B.
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2273138
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I want nothing to do with anyone,
other than doing nothing with you.
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227221
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A herd of garbage trucks groaned down dark streets filling their black hydraulic hearts with rotten trashcans and glass, and a smile ate her whole face. I showed her a text from a friend: "T-minus 10 seconds till meltdown."She laughed and I wrote back.A small,…
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2272119
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Suddenly there was a crash of thunder, and they raised their eyes for the first time heavenwards. That was the beginning of what we call civilisation. - adapted from Prolegomena to Work in Progress — Stuart GilbertIt's the third year of the third millenium,…
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22722215
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Mariposa, the skinny hound, crawls out from under the trailer
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227210
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Azure shook her head and stood to her feet. Staring at her wrists, she knew that she would have to endure this until they found help.
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227120
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A bank bag now hung from those teeth—yellow-gray rancid, decaying teeth, strands of tobacco chew laced in between. Those thin pen mark lips could not hide the teeth’s keyhole spaces, shaped by open cavities—the bank bag hung from those teeth. The me
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227177
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...I had a string of Sunday School medals that knighted me a warrior for Jesus Christ of Nazareth...
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227064
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When Quince came rolling up into my front yard that morning, we were up to our neck in August, staring down a seventh-grade year that had crept perilously close when we weren’t looking. I’m thirty-five years clear of it now, and I can still sense Texas on
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227052
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The snapdragon has now achieved absolute resonance, the gateways on either side are fully opened wide with beautiful iridescent curtains billowing out in high frequency spectrum waves producing a very pleasant ecstatic effect within observer's sensory app
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227066
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Watch her now as she tries to not smoke. Considers, reconsiders. Checks her nylon bag for her phone charger, and lights a cigarette anyway, which she immediately extinguishes in the kitchen sink.
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22702210
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She feels ugly but ready for anything.
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227031
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There, at that cabin, she had first tasted the back of a hand in anger, the sting of a horsewhip, bone-deep fear and, finally, an unthinkable act of self defense.
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