1596 6 4
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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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820 0 0
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Mine lasted 90 days. But don't they all? After we made love the first time, it was early November, I remember, some internal part of me shot upward with a laughter that would not stop. Something…
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1234 2 1
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I ran for the car, heart pounding in my chest, feverish. I jerked the door open and dropped into the seat of the Audi S5. The ignition fired and the car purred to life. I dropped it into gear and hit the gas, tires spinning, gravel spraying. The treads caught on the hot …
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1716 15 10
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You wanted a love poem written just for you. / Here it is. Don’t look askance.
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1238 6 5
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When I slip through the seams I return to the same place.
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1870 20 9
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When he turns around she has her top off and is climbing out of her skirt. "I don't like old men that much," she says. "We don't have to talk. No one will know."
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1551 21 12
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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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1574 8 8
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They were a family, now, these three: child, widow, widower.
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1192 5 3
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“You’ve put all my anorexic friends on the table nearest the buffet,” I say. “And all my bulimic friends on the other side of the room away from the buffet and the toilets.”
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2380 47 34
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934 0 0
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Do you know what it is to crave something? Of course you do. But this was different. This was beyond craving.
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1319 0 0
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Scribble something basic with traces of spectacular,pen every pint of pain spilled during the massacrewhittle the convoluted down to the vernacularboiled the whole story, now you got everybody crackin' upnow step back from the business like, “man, that's wack as…
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1404 4 2
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‘Didn't you used to have a daughter?'
The tense and phraseology jarred, but he was inarticulate not ignorant, awkward rather than unaware of how it sounded and she smiled at him.
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1564 4 4
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Alma Tucker settled into middle age with the comfort that escapes most women. Her festival queen days gone. Along with her wispy waist and cherry blond hair, replaced by broader curves and graying tresses. She was content with the way age had changed her
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1834 23 9
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Fred, who by that point had already wanted to call Jimmy "Jim," talked a river. Jimmy, who had already called her Freddy, took a mojo bag from his back pants pocket and asked her to write something that he could put inside.
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1130 0 0
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Slipping into the Sydney Harbour Tunnel like a nocturnal creature fleeing the light, tears stream down my cheeks, spilling from my lips, the pain too great to care about self-preservation. Drunk still, hands clenched, I strain to focus on the world fading into a blur of…
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1050 2 2
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thunder striking in a pancake cumulative, his building bouncing upon itself, life going Richtor Scale, a billion pounds of panic per square second
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1568 12 11
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I knew my mother would die by the weekend
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911 1 0
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“You got a cigarette, man?” “Hey, mister, you got a cigarette?” “You got a cigarette, mister?” “Hey, mister, you listening to me? You got any spare change?” The voice was coming from the…
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630 0 0
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Seamus has the palsy now
who once was called another name.
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1371 1 1
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I am in the hallway, but I don’t sense it. That is to say: I don’t feel my body. I am like a phantom, a limbless entity floating, flailing.
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1765 0 0
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[CAUTION: THIS CAN CONTAINS THE CAFFEINE EQUIVALENT OF THREE CUPS OF COFFEE. PEOPLE WHO ARE ELDERLY, PREGNANT, OR SENSITIVE TO CAFFEINE SHOULD NOT CONSUME THIS BEVERAGE!]
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1509 4 4
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1373 17 6
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The Viper turns so quickly that Father's grabbing hand now faces its head instead of its tail.
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1715 8 5
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Watch me sleep. Say I'm lovely, marbled-white. Pretend my forest is other to me. Pretend I am what you have made me. The sugar-almond starlet. Your virgin. Your treasure to break into. Believe me unconscious. It is you who are the dreamer. Look how those thorny…
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1482 0 0
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"Umm... T-shirt, sweats. You know, typical sleepwear for me. I had been in these jeans for the video shoot, but they had to go."
"J-jeans, huh?" Lucas started to falter.
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1468 3 3
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On September 12th, 2011, the ban on deer hunting became official. Apparently, the hunting and killing of deer had become too cruel.
The ban had been a long time in the making. Ever since man began hunting deer way back in the day—somewhere between a fe
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1426 6 5
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We didn't wear shoes in the summer, except for Sunday school and church. The soles of our feet were black and tough as shoe leather.
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877 0 0
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They were an interesting young couple. Tom was a big man with rugged features, though not handsome. His face was deeply pock-marked with the scars that are sometimes left over from a terrible bout with adolescent acne. His wife – though I was never cert
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1373 4 0
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After sportscasters announced the assassination and while the reverberations of the words were still fading people were already shouting
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