2028 3 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				The house was empty now - silent.  Each room was filled with air too thin to sustain memory.  She stood, absorbing the emptiness, addding it to her own.  Her footsteps were hesitant, reluctant to disturb the silence.  She walked into her old bedroom - so… 
					
				 
				
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1893 5 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				1          Michael Martone is Michael Martone.
                                                                                1.1       Michael Martone begins, middles, and ends Michael Martone. 
					
				 
				
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1569 5 3 
      
			 
			
			
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				"I made up my mind then, in the backseat, sucking on a cherry Popsicle, that I wanted to be like Ruby’s mother..." 
					
				 
				
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1251 3 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				square mannequin-wives who can’t look in their eyes 
					
				 
				
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1180 3 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				Life strikes another blow and  away I go:    back to the cave to sleep,  read, write, dream,     soothed by rocking chair  therapy,    spend hours on hours looking  at photo memories,    lighting incense and candles,    crying, howling out the  injustices smothering me.   … 
					
				 
				
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1107 3 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				Junior year, word got around that Eric had lost his virginity to his sophomore girlfriend. She rode him on the back seat of his car. Eric wasn't keen to discuss it - he seemed to feel a certain blushing shame. It was almost as if he was raped.Eric was a scientist, first and… 
					
				 
				
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1490 4 1 
      
			 
			
			
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				When I bite into a York Peppermint Pattie, I get the sensation of being curled in a ball inside a cold, dark cave filled with my darkest, most paralyzing fears. 
					
				 
				
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1318 6 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				your light is gonna
last me
through the week 
					
				 
				
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1398 3 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				I turned a maiden            to a witch / and back                        again 
					
				 
				
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1089 5 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				What don't they all do for us?They absorb, eliminate negative feelings and make you smile. To just name a few ... They make you sane, how insane it may seem from a certain point of view.But let me tell you this: I'm 1300 kms away from my family. I don't care much about… 
					
				 
				
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1999 3 1 
      
			 
			
			
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				"I would physically — not metaphorically, mind you — make love to that avocado..." 
					
				 
				
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2639 4 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				yoo evva kizza rabid atween da erz? end chee siz NO end din yoo siz yoo wanna kizza rabid atween da erz? end chee siz OK end yoo pull yoo 
					
				 
				
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1449 3 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				Each time his eyes closed, he shook off the sleep, whimpered, and opened them wide again.  I’d never watched a baby fall asleep before, but I realized at that time that falling asleep could be a scary thing. The world gets fuzzy and starts slipping awa 
					
				 
				
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1231 8 1 
      
			 
			
			
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				Buck, naked, has no words. The best he can manage is a dopey strangulated cough. His wife, who is clothed, stands before him, next to the waterbed that took Buck half a day to force into the trailer. 
					
				 
				
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1863 5 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				My mate and I are owned, but have freedom to take to the endless sky. 
					
				 
				
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1970 6 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				It’s two o’clock in the morning, and I’m lying in bed, wide awake, drenched in sweat.  I know what I need–a Thin Mint cookie–but I don’t know where I’m gonna find one. 
					
				 
				
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1562 6 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				"What the fuck are you looking at, Carl?" She snaps, turning her head toward me as the truck edges off the road and into a field of tobacco, into those broad green leaves of ancient sacristy and modern ablution. This is not a blissful kind of field. It is not full… 
					
				 
				
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1537 5 3 
      
			 
			
			
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				Henry and I had met at the hospital. He'd been forty years my senior, but we'd been in for precisely the same reason: kidney stones. 
					
				 
				
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1236 2 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				The scared woman, she hides her flaws from the world. 
					
				 
				
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1610 4 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				God's honest truth, I wake up every morning when my clock punches out its dulcet, insistent clangs, a setting called Ultra Zen Up & Out. I brush my teeth with a blue dollar store toothbrush and watch one of the five morning TV shows designed to let me know the weather… 
					
				 
				
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1449 3 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				He took the car out into the middle of Nowhere, Mexico, and drove it at top speed, off-road for a day and a night. I am talking strut-breaking, axle-wrecking, wheel-bending, paint-peeling conditions and balls-to-the-wall, testosterone-drunk driving.
 
					
				 
				
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1199 3 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				Self-possession. He had it. In his arctic white t-shirt; blonde haired, broad shouldered, unburdened. “I will make you love me,” he had said, in a bar.  
					
				 
				
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1215 2 2 
      
			 
			
			
			 | 
				
				We Must Save Ourselves     I'm looking for my savior on subways,  Is he this man pushing half himself    On a skate board, from car to car,   Singing I have no Legs, I have no Legs,     I'm looking for my savior in coffee shops   Of… 
					
				 
				
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2011 4 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				You like your life.  Ducks march in a row. You've reached a certain age but you're strong.  Healthy. You've got food, clothing, shelter. You have insurance and  important papers.  You don't have a man in your life, and you admit—  Admit nothing.  The… 
					
				 
				
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1790 4 2 
      
			 
			
			
			 | 
				
				The stern tone of the chairwoman made him miss his mother, the snap of her accusations, the sting of her belt on the backs of his legs.  
					
				 
				
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2244 4 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				The handler found Topsy as docile as a woman being fitted for a shoe.  Each time he tapped his cane against her ankle, she lifted her foot and held the pose, allowing him to dip his sponge into a bucket and pull it wet across the thick ridges of her skin. It was… 
					
				 
				
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284 3 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				IA promised land so tiny, one that rests upon a   pin,  knows only death   as theory, knows only sleep as   sin.  Disregard the   deluge of that which never   is,  is the nothing   that is hers the nothing that is   his?     Let us go to Venus, pretend that it is  … 
					
				 
				
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1279 1 1 
      
			 
			
			
			 | 
				
				another lonely drone holding still 
					
				 
				
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1532 5 2 
      
			 
			
			
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				Robert  wants so badly after reading a book where a man wakes up as a bug to  wake up as a bug. He researches the avenues of metamorphosis where  science has been where it is going. He is disappointed  that of all things science has turned into other things, none… 
					
				 
				
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1511 2 3 
      
			 
			
			
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				BABY MOUSE      She and the baby squeeze into the neon blue star-studded rocket ship in front of K-Mart, a tight fit because the baby's still inside her and the ship is made for under ten year olds and the steering wheel dents her stomach and the baby backs up and… 
					
				 
				
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