2178 5 4
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You can’t take a chandelier on an emergency dash across a nuclear desert.
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21781313
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Talking about a Friend Over a Cup or Two of Coffee “Their first fight was over school lunches. Free school lunches. She taught Kindergarten in a public special ed center for emotionally disturbed children. The…
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217862
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You longed to rip off her butterfly wings and watch her scream in agony. You ached to carve the steel from her eyes.
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21782115
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“Last night the Scots invaded Sweden,” I wrote, “to retrieve the silver filched from the Irish the Norwegians had in their coffers when Sweden conquered. The Swedes offered the Nobel to a Scots writer to keep ... the peace."
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21781712
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Conceptio culpa
Nasci pena
Labor vita
Necesse mori
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217758
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Mama hung them everywhere. It started with just a few, in our apartment and outside on the brick. She made walls into windows.
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217700
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[continued from part one...]After sweeps, my schoolwork started to slip. I had trouble paying attention in class, and my workbooks and tests came back from the teacher marked in ketchup red ink. I had always been a good student, and this academic…
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21772410
|
One sunny morning, a big-bellied ball of yellow fur surveyed a yard full of prospective adopters and ran straight to one.
She’d been chosen.
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217792
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“Dad’s a dick,” my sister said. I nodded. He threw $20 on the candy counter for one small bag of popcorn and told the girl to keep the change.
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217784
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It calmed the guilt in my heart while kids reveled, laughed, and "made time" with the neighborhood girls on that final night of freedom.
No one would talk to those girls again.
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21771314
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I don't know if we'll meet again in the sea of light. Circumstances aren't only up to human beings. After all maybe it's all drunk circumstance, but that doesn't answer the blinding question, it only poses some more. This is…
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217722
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There are worse things than getting your ass kicked by a 12 year old Puerto Rican kid. This was exactly my thinking as he stood over me, his pre-pubescent screams sounding like a baby Bruce Lee, preparing to finish me off.
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217664
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I put my arms around her and whisper to her while she plays the piano. She wiggles and tells me to stop it.
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21761617
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what smells like love may not be love at all
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217644
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Eventually, all the windows on the street went dark, each small house cloaking its occupants in a world unto itself, soundproofed and emotionally remote.
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217633
|
Marie shrugs. “Maybe she’s just late. Come on, let's wait by the jungle gym.” She runs over and starts climbing. The jungle gym is closest to the path that goes into the woods and down into the canyon. She has to get him into the woods somehow.
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217661
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I can feel the souls
of those who perished
here
They’re still here
like old kites
hanging in the sky
tattered, but they
won’t come down
or can’t come down
just yet
because they haven’t
fulfilled their
unborn promises
t
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217685
|
I could love them all, your people, /
Learn their differences, speak their tongues, /
When there is no one there to hold you /
But me, my arms would be wide enough /
To hold armies of your need. Do not forget.
|
21753013
|
I had felt suddenly lighter and next thing I knew I was watching Leonard Tucker and Sister William from somewhere near the ceiling. I saw myself, too, at my desk, holding my songbook out in front of me like everyone else.
|
217521
|
“Cheng Ho didn’t go just Cape Horn; treasure ships visit Australia and America. His very advanced compass. Not just point north-south. Show east-west too.”
|
217574
|
She began guiding Penny’s arms, whispering movements through her body. Memory and experience sang through every fiber of their being. The song had become her life.
|
217552
|
The storm grew in might until it spawned the worst kind of tornado, an F-5 or Finger of God.
|
217563
|
For some, a vertical pattern will evoke prison bars, for others, product bar codes.
|
21751310
|
I need a different storage solution
|
21741013
|
pluck me from the charred grate
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21742912
|
Night fell and the photographer slept, one hand between Prue's legs.
|
21741710
|
When I squint at her from across the table I can see the waveforms created by her carrier signal.
|
217432
|
...and 55 words to tell you about it.
|
217463
|
Danny said that you like him now. He smiled like it was the best news that he could give me, but his eyes dared me. …
|
217474
|
When they called him down there to the morgue to identify the body, he drove behind the wheel of his truck like some steady maniac on a long haul. The Ford 150 cried out for new shocks, but that hardly mattered. Mud plastered side panels and…
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