1305 2 1
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Boys start fires all the time— it's a rite of passage— so when your father gives you the task of setting fire to the family's trash, you don't mind, and when the flames ignite inside the old dishwasher he heaved into the woods behind the house, you…
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134000
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The dying rose spoke to the wood
That kept in it's heart a love of good
And all that was in bloom
It could not let that happy rose
Fret about in terrible death throes
Would not be its tomb.
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81200
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Hold my heart the child in your arms
The roses of April blooming,
I bend down before you cracked and broke
Spilled out like albumin.
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97100
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Reverend Peter Roman could stand it no more. He stopped his speech. He felt a fire burning through him, a hatred for humanity and all the weaknesses of beings not perfect before God. He stood a long while, staring at the congregation. Then, he slowly spok
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1500124
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The fettuccine is a disaster. Mini-ants have invaded the container. Barry spots them in the boiling water after pouring in the pasta, not much more than floating black specks, but too many to ignore. He dumps out the pasta and returns to the closet to…
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100400
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The night before, his dad had stumbled in drunk and beat his mother. John had covered his ears with his pillow to block out their screams.
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101440
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We all wish to partake in great events.
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163093
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Back when Richard was still skinny and mean, we fought at The Island. He broke a pool stick over my head. I bruised more than his ego. We fought over a woman, as always. We were best friends and that’s what we did.
W
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205431
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There are gestures, unmarred by the words put to them after all has failed. When Y. stopped you from talking to apply lip balm to your dry lips. Or she sidled up to you to read what you had written for her. When you lay on the grass together she put her head on…
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2039154
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There’s things you can change in this world and things you can’t. We have to figure out which is which. Though I never was much good at it, I guess.
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120400
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THE LAST THING I WANTED, expected, or needed was to be standing in the doorway of Carly Ray's room, watching her clutch a picture of her father, my old friend Beryl, up to her face. She is so tiny, but at the same time there is something very adult about the way she looks.…
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1635178
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I kiss his sunburned nose, so nice under the beach house. We hear the shower of palm leaves like wings getting ready. We talk about a time we'll no longer know each other, when he'll be sad in a bar in another state, slipping and sliding and petting lost dogs in the parking…
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165142
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We've worked silence over /
Like pros, our best work together.
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133840
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Holy shit, man, look at that!” Mike's pimply face melts into drooling bliss. His dad had stopped in this whacko town on the way to our campsite, muttered something about angry lesbians, and disappeared. Rick and I follow Mike's dumbstruck gaze to a shop…
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116441
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I'm in the boardroom, downtown in San Francisco. I don't even remember showing up for work today. I hope they fire me, just like they fired Bill. Well not exactly like that, that was awful. He was caught downloading a phenomenal amount of…
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150000
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that is a fair description of our family if I add the disclaimer that the girls are whores and we don’t have much in common.
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96910
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Lately, instead of the images of dreams waking me up, as has always been the case, it is sounds that jolt me awake. The thumps and roars and slithering of creatures unseen. The ghosts that slam cupboards shut. The apparitions of robbers breaking down the front door:…
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1611177
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To make extra money, my father wrote music reviews for the Calgary Herald, and on Saturday nights, he went to hear the Symphony, or into recital halls to listen to the chamber music that was being performed around the city. He took me, once, to a performa
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103660
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Technique, Technique, Technique, Technique, TECHNIQUE!
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97340
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We construct what we want, from what has failed in the past. We thought this worked. The picture was buzzing for me and I tried to hold on. I went blindly forward.
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176952
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Her eyes were brown. But he wasn’t sure. He looked again: her eyes were blue. Her eyes were blue, and looking straight at him.
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133720
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‘Just get out of bed,’ I reply. ‘It looks like the fairies have been at your head. You should turn your clothes inside out. Put out a biscuit. Ring a bell. Buy a rooster; or a recording of it crowing. It will keep the sprites at bay.
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94230
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They take the blue man out on a stretcher, stiff in cyanotic repose until the paramedics shake him. He sits bolt upright, startled, confused, indignant. ‘Lazarus?' I ask. ‘Argyria. Happens every fucking time he naps on the …
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159761
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Puberty, for Ellen, was less than an overnight event—yes, she got her period in a more or less timely fashion, but what her doctor referred to coolly as secondary sexual characteristics—namely, boobs—took their damned sweet time in coming.
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113300
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Lottie was a slim, fine looking woman. But Dale thought her breast implants were the worst case of overkill he had ever seen.
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127593
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You looked like someone I didn't want to know. I guess that's why I got in the car that night. My penchant for self-destruction was aroused by your black nail polish and the lavender circles under your eyes. You looked like someone that could hurt me, yeah, that's why I got…
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108340
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Bonnie envied all of those people who instantly forgot their horrible traumas: Jessica Lynch, the Central Park jogger. Their own brains rescued them. Bonnie's brain was not so generous.
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101720
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I drove all night, but there weren’t nothing Roy Orbison about it. I’d been driving and around lunchtime I just thought I might stop by Shona’s place.
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193144
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When Charlie woke up he couldn’t find his inner Charlie.
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128552
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John Lipkin took a drag off his cigarette and rummaged through his desk drawer looking for pot. There wasn't any. He remembered looking last night, but he looked again now. There wasn't a damn thing, just some stems…
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