2085 8 6
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Sal, a finder of misplaced objects notices the sunglasses, flip flops and boxers left on the pathway heading to the beach. They are his gifts today, so gallant is he of these ‘strays’ seeking ownership. He tries the glasses on first and feels dizzy.
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208532
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Since Patty got the lumpectomy, she won’t sleep with anyone but Cal, because he was the one who went with her to the hospital and wasn’t surprised when he saw the scar.
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20853313
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There was dad sitting at the table, wide awake, reading glasses on nose, pen in hand above a Doppler graph of numbers on paper, one of many now-lost theorems, looking up as his son walked into the room.
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20852314
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Henry yells at her when she lights cigarettes and candles. But this is her small secret ritual, her way of making good with the god she is no longer sure she believes in...
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20851411
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She was petite, pear-shaped, white, the girlfriend of a friend who'd done his degree in Russian Literature, but that's not the only reason I liked him. The husband I had for a while traveled whether he needed to or not and so I'd go with Julie and Phillip to movies,…
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2085136
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You are a boy with a birthday bike smiling like our son, standing in a photograph surrounded by other sons, who turn rocks over and over, who keep snakes in plastic bread bags, who find the bones of something wild in the woods. You smile that way still.
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208410
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Daddy? Yes, hun. What do you think about life? Did you ask your mother? I'm asking you. (lowers newspaper) Well, (squinting eyes) life gives you so much pumpkin. ! and (like a whip) and..? (brows almost touching the hairline)…
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208400
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The stone floor was cold and the sky above had a purple haze. The setting sun hid beyond the trees outside the crumbled walls. Vines reached over the well as if it grabbed it like hand.
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208411
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May as well have lived two lives, he thinks: one before memory and one after. And how can you remember someone else's life? You can't. After forty years of living, he realizes that there's no way of knowing what his own eyes have witnessed.
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208420
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Left, I see parkland and cyclists and sun. Right: picnic blankets, naked men and lunchtime assignations.
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2084114
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Everything is illuminated. If anyone is watching, we look happy.
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2083109
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When you think I'm not looking,
I always am.
You say it's like nicotine, your best analogy as a non-smoker.
The kind of hit that is hard to live without and isn't it human nature,
you ponder.
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20832216
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My mother used to say she'll be just like you and you‘ll deserve it. I was a Punk Rocker. A rebel. Emily worries about things like grades and sports. She's on the soccer team. I got stoned under the bleachers. Emily, is a good kid. …
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208392
|
"There's a concert next month," Sherry said. "Why don't you come to that and I'll introduce you? Then we can go from there."
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208393
|
I love how you touch me, your hands warm on my shape...
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208262
|
No, she hated the vain, overweight, pathetic, glass-of-merlot-a-day, SUV piloting, Carmen-cell-phone-ring-toned, housewives and consumer sluts that charged through the store like starving hyenas through the fallen, decaying, putrid, corpses of a plague-ri
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20822416
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I stared out the window, the fog creeped up the Avenues like a spectator.
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208200
|
Ai did not know what to do, nor say. She did not want Manami to suffer anymore than she already has.
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208275
|
Pow! I shoot him through his jelly donut.
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208285
|
On his last day of high school Jackie York woke up to the smell of burning books. He didn't know it was his last day of high school. He did know the smoke coming through his rusty window screen was book smoke.
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2081128
|
his perfect ivory
voice telling me
i brush too hard.
…as if he cared
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208110
|
Before I was 18 years old, in my small home town of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada, I invented the designer jean...
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208100
|
My father said that he had been ready for that journey for many days past and that he had asked often for the spirits to come and take him. He prayed to the god of the heavens and to the earth mother. He prayed for the three of us, and he prayed for the s
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208101
|
“Charlie was right about you, Nan,” she said in a voice of pure defeat. “You are a gentle spirit. And probably too good for people like us.”
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2081168
|
He disliked intrusion and very specifically innocuous intrusion, nice guys, one might say, who tried to be near him to learn something from him or who admired him but who, as in that passage, came merely to disturb his work.
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208020
|
The Master of Sleep had lived alone for many years, so when his daughters first moved into his house he welcomed them, seemingly glad for their company...
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208073
|
“You’ll have to do better than that,” Skip says.
My husband laughs. He has a high girlish chuckle when he’s truly delighted. He can sing really high like a girl, too.
“All right,” I say. I leave my headband
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208072
|
There were a lot of advantages to having shoelaces.
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208032
|
Grand Dad was born in the time where men of honor were never too far when danger arose, like the phlegm and fevers of an oncoming plague.The oversized house felt stagnate and angry as he closed the heavy solid wooden front door behind him. There was an echo that made…
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2080119
|
They kiss, opening their mouths into a smile, sharing a secret. Their kiss is so intimate. I blush, and look away embarrassed and a little aroused.
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