1628 14 10
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Momma’s hands smell of vanilla.
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162883
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Morning claims me from sleep before I can say noYou wake up instantly from your alarm clock's ringYou are bright, enthusiastic, ready to cooperateIt will be a good dayYou shower, dress and I prepare your breakfastEggs, soft, toast two ways, one with salmon cream cheese,One…
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162875
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The base of the monastery before him, he let her go into a warm updraft and she cascaded out and up, never falling as she rode the tiger into her next.
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162888
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It took all four of his kids to convince my father to pull the plug. Mom's car crash had left her a vegetable, but of course he hung on. Once they withdrew life support, she was gone in ten minutes. The first thing our father said was that he was hungry. He felt…
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162823
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["Mea Culpa" means: I don't care what you think, sorry is when I feel like making you hear me say it.]
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162764
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The day the thinking factory imploded everyone for miles knew there was a problem. The sound of the walls crumbling in upon themselves was heard for miles, or perhaps it wasn't.
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162731
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Sure, it was a hot day, but the driver was in the middle of a driving lesson!
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162700
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It’s confusing enough to grow up in a place like America, a country without definitive culture, except for ranch dressing and reality TV, but it’s even worse to grow up half one thing, half another, christened a hyphenation of names without connection to
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1627117
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My dad at the wheel, my mother's ulcer inflamed, she puked her way across northern Alabama that summer, from Huntsville and the rusting rockets to Tuscumbia, the farthest any of us had been west. We drove through raw, blistered towns,…
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162732
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Rob thought he might even make it. He'd stopped off south of Seattle, in Kent, and filled up the tank and went back in the can and topped off again. He got back on the road, to all appearances blase, blase. The montages were muted, at least for…
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16261112
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...even unbelieving prayer
muttered with quiet resigned breaths
can not foretell or forestall stains...
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162651
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unbury yourself from the silt and give me some seal love.
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162664
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The sudden sound of his engine starting breaks the silence of the hot, summer, Florida night. As he drives away in his black Chevy truck he glances in the rear view mirror at his girlfriend's house. He tries to forget about the girl he is leaving behind. His heart begins to…
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1626143
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You have a house (plural, as in Spain)
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1626209
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In that mix of sports and religion, TV was what there was of virtue. I thought bars were nicer.
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16261711
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She drew her hands out of the chest cavity and looked at the clock.
‘Time of death,’ she said.
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162698
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My brother died in his sleep almost two months ago. He was 25. He was addicted to pharmaceuticals. Two days before he died, he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed his truck into a highway sign. It was the last thing he owned. He had been living with m
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162600
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SO ABOUT TEN minutes later Heidi arrived at the house with her boyfriend in tow, looking as if she had stepped out of an MTV music video, her black leather jacket loaded with sequins and silver studs, her blonde hair now colored green, all frizzy and unke
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162531
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I sit in my chemise like a forgotten rag doll on the stool before my vanity. My body is postured towards nothing in particular, my gaze keeps returning to vacant; it’s far preferable to any fixed sight it could find.
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1625107
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The first husband was young and lovely. He had a little nose and long fingers he used for things like planting begonias in my clay pot. I did not do flowers. So that was nice.
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1625148
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The rain is no terrible epitaph
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16251412
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The hour reflected those pleasant moments when evening hunger can be satiated by anticipation alone, before the pangs become demanding.
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1625208
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The music, Antonín Dvořák's 'New World Symphony,' the second movement, 'Largo,' immediately alters my mood.
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16241910
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The jail, where I stayed for 48 hours, gave me enough information to write a 180-page book, something I resisted setting out upon due to the insult of it.
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16241715
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There he was. Minnesota Fats, short and pudgy, jowly and blond-haired.
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162452
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There was that time he decided to avoid the whole situation by getting off the bus early.
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162400
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The deep breathing has helped. My heart rate is back down to a normal resting rate somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 60 beats per minute, about one solid thump every second like clockwork, a precision I can truly appreciate.
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1624128
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In the office supply store on Union, Jeremy, the stock boy, shelves tubs of rubber bands. Tubs with an easy-access pop-top and a see-through container. If Hendy saw these tubs, she would think these particular rubber bands resembled anorexic gummy-worms,
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162400
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She saw mana from the pendant floating to her chest and its resonance pulsed with her heart, yet it felt empty. Unaware of what she had done, she reached out to it, thought of a name, and called for it.
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1624128
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I'm slim, baby, caramelized as a Slo-Poke buried in the fatty acids of some old dog's guts. The way they creep, frantic with finesse, free, locking their eyes in the dental mirror. It's wrong, maybe, but who'd dare to declaw them? Look at it from their angle, the one that…
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