| 5670  41  22   
 | She wonders if Minh knows fear, if it is something that forms in the womb, like fingernails. | 
		
		
			| 1184  6  1   
 |  | 
		
		
			| 1233  4  1   
 | I want you to tell me the truth, she said.  The whole fucking truth.  | 
		
		
			| 1521  15  5   
 | I made myself tiny as I could, imagining I was Houdini shackled underwater, holding my nose and practicing my escape... | 
		
		
			| 1200  0  0   
 | She once told me that cleanliness is next to godliness, but I think everything is next to godliness, if you care enough to pay attention. | 
		
		
			| 2426  25  19   
 | My mother was a child of the death camps, passed her adolescence there. Survived. | 
		
		
			| 1682  11  8   
 | “Sometimes when I feel the urge to create, I don’t know whether to grab my paints, my camera, my guitar or my pen.”
“You could have sex,” her friend, sitting in the desk next to hers, joked. | 
		
		
			| 2521  2  1   
 | The crowd gathered around the dying man's bed, waiting for his last words.
He was a genius. The most prolific writer and philosopher to ever live. He wiped his ass with the words of Shakespeare. The thoughts of Plato, Socrates, Descartes, and Nietzsche w | 
		
		
			| 1220  2  0   
 | Prayer: Cold prayers in her throat, so far all unanswered. This thing grows steadily, unmistakably, cobbling counterfeit cells and flesh together into an unspeakable mass. | 
		
		
			| 1197  4  2   
 | By lunch:
The dryer is an F-5 dervish of mismatched socks, blue jeans and your yellowing college T's, lovingly held onto.  For a moment there is a comforting warmth and softness to their smell.  In the debris strewn landscape of the living room a carcass | 
		
		
			| 1964  2  2   
 | It's true that he had always been more pure than her, looking for the authentic experience, authentic food. And more adventurous. Blogging their way around the world, yes, that had been his idea . . . | 
		
		
			| 975  2  0   
 | but isn't that the case
in most long-term,
committed
relationships? | 
		
		
			| 4641  47  41   
 | Marie knew that she should get out of the tub. She understood that Ellen was at the point of explosion. But Marie was too invested in imagining the picture she made at that very moment. As if through Benoit Doniel's eyes. As if it was a scene in a movie. | 
		
		
			| 1277  2  0   
 | A rock group named Stuck Gas Pedal. Another named Tweezer. A group of young punk-rockers wearing neckerchiefs named Mein Kampfire. But wait, there’s more. 
	A song called “We Were Being Facetious,” co-written by them all. 
	Lost Flyswatter. That | 
		
		
			| 1034  0  0   
 | Our fingers, arms and toes slither over one another along the smooth crevices between muscle and bone like familiar childhood paths. | 
		
		
			| 1232  5  3   
 | Crass, vulgar, boorish, impaired, angry, depressed, jealous, regretful. | 
		
		
			| 1791  14  8   
 | The rain is no terrible epitaph | 
		
		
			| 1550  1  0   
 | [He] practiced aromatherapy and licentiousness, in no particular order. | 
		
		
			| 1044  6  0   
 | It was not my intent to be nosy. I just  wanted to be the best neighbor I could be. Having never had anyone  close growing up, I wanted to get involved and be a part of my  community, such as it was.      My only neigbhor was Edna Phelps. She  was one… | 
		
		
			| 1975  13  11   
 | i was jus countin' your heartbeats, Emmie
and you know what?
i think they's the same as mine! | 
		
		
			| 1583  6  2   
 | We’re on our way out, my brother and me, to the graveyard.  | 
		
		
			| 1438  3  1   
 | He sees how he could release the duck, imagines it winging low over the water to where the others have made it safely. | 
		
		
			| 2192  24  13   
 | looking space packed right in up therelike a sun bleached kite stuck in between  the several bluish colorsof the sky today has its ownamazing heartbeat. I can seeit clearly from here. Oh I can feel it  reverberating for miles andmiles. If I look away it… | 
		
		
			| 2102  4  3   
 | Rudely awakened, confused and bewildered, he stood stone silent and watched me flee.  I barely managed to keep my wits together, didn't and couldn't pretend that I wasn't running out of his bedroom as if my life depended on it.  He wouldn't call me a cab, | 
		
		
			| 1991  2  0   
 | Alysia never said a word as she rested her body on Suzaku’s feathers. She felt the wings cover her like a blanket. It brought memories of her mother doing the same as they watched a movie together on the couch. | 
		
		
			| 1114  6  3   
 | I returned to Minnesota from Montreal a week ago to realize that my sweetheart in Manhattan had hired a Ukrainian escort. | 
		
		
			| 2238  24  13   
 | Later I take his hand, and I lead him up the stairs.  I want to show him something, I say.  | 
		
		
			| 1678  3  2   
 | The smell of candy and burn...  /A patriotic prose poem for the fourth of July. | 
		
		
			| 1145  2  0   
 | That’s not just a 
trinket on her finger, 
that’s a rock, a fortress, 
a castle. No one 
can scale those walls 
except Joe Sixpack, 
slumped beside her 
at the airport. 
They’re not a match. 
I give it 
5 years, max. 
Not even. 
Joe  | 
		
		
			| 1434  9  2   
 | The bus heads west on Route 36, toward the next stop – Howell, New Jersey. After driving ten minutes, and after crossing the tracks, the bus gets a flat. |