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At the Cimitiere Montparnasse he offers the girl his raincoat. I'm searching for Samuel Beckett, he says, and holds an umbrella over her as she consults her map. We're close, she says, pointing. I'll go with you. Then we can visit Simone de Beauvoir. My name is Scarlet.…
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He and I are still and somber at the kitchen table. We’re both wearing black and stare at each other through blood-shot eyes. The children’s thumps echo on the ceiling above. I think about the other family’s children.
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18723315
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To envy faith, to envy love --//
is there a fate more hateful? Choices/
scatter like stars. Too many.
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101572321
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We all got married — Suzanne, and Virginia, and I — and it was all we ever wanted to be at the time.
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19942320
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There's always a sound, something triggering the fear.
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If you outlive me, she said, it won't be because I smoke but because of what you put me through when you quit.
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‘I love you' said the man at the book signing.
He was one of the last. The shop was closing. The staff were starting to turn off the lights. She was sitting in the glow of a table lamp with her latest novel in stacks around her.
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40022118
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On her lunch break, she dumps Luis for Daniel Towens, the ugliest man in the county.
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8281815
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I don't ask for much. No, don't grunt at me, it's true. Give me a smooth boulder and a stone I can hold in my hand for grinding, maybe a sharp bit of flint for scraping. A new stick I can dig with, my old one's really worn. Shrgk's mate just got her a new stick and he even…
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17632119
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I once read a book of warnings.
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21203316
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It was a year of red, white, and blue bell bottoms, chokers, and mini-skirts. It was not a decade of pink stretch pants, pink sweatshirts, and pink snowsuits.
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20122118
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There can be no convergence./
There is only the talking that talks about/
an angle of sight nothing else can share.
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We sat under the broken umbrella, its flowered fabric hanging limp on one side. The rain fell softly at the edges of our backs. I kissed his hand, the one without fingers (not a casualty of his job, only of birth). My lips pressed what I couldn't say into his…
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19143616
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A forgotten sprinkler is going in a neglected flower garden, water overflowing the bent wood borders and flooding the ground on either side.
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...what will happen to me buying drugs on the street, at night...?
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When the malady struck and the world fell dark at noon, she and I groped the walls and found our front door. Outside, bewildered, we heard the whine of jets in free-fall, explosions in the imagined distance. And we heard a car — or was it a truck that veered…
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5551918
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A pet scorpion.
A pet scorpion named Chris.(1)
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Boxing Gloves for when...
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20632719
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We are not alone, not as alone as we think.
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229783
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My resistance sublimates. There is a long instant of absolute relinquishment, in which I imagine droplets of water plinking into my lungs in a slow, musical fashion, like icicles melting in a perfect cave.
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He wanted to walk in, take off his scrubs, and not have to look at pictures of peaches.
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It was a pleasant time, my thoughts were mostly good ones, with little effort wasted on regret.
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Tongs, uvulas, money. Love. But really, silence.
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tiny bits each one found meant something had blown apart. that someone was no longer with us. but somewhere that things were crawling towards unity again. another gun had been fired. would peace always start over? it's funny how it will. a hand…
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A landscape has the tendency to take on new dimensions when night comes.
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She said this is our abode and it sounded like a warble and she made a sweeping gesture with her arm and the boy started to cry.
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Now when she speaks to him, he no longer responds with an interrogative but rather a cheery, "You're absolutely right, dear" or "I'll get right on it," or "What a great idea!"
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Now, these explosions announced, political bribes and propaganda weren't going to be enough to push things through. There would need to be survival from blunt force trauma and fear tactics, a relentless forward march
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26664817
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Every one of them will tell you I drank so much malt liquor I could barf up a distillery and that wouldn’t be a lie.
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