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Our ironies don’t make us happy
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Tender bodies sizzle on the grill.
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When the car arrived, Kitty bounded out, lipstick-stained cigarette dangling, silver hair tightly teased. We could not escape her hug, smelling of peppermint and Aqua-Net and Jean Nate.
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Exhaling slowly and deeply, Tyler settled his back in against the saddle of the tree's broad trunk and let it all go.
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“Mommy,” the voice was thin as a fledgling's. “I'm here, baby,” I said. An arm rose from the pavement and small fingers wound themselves into my…
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sheets, white, coarse
redolent with Clorox
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Overnight, I felt drunk, as if headed for hangover, but I hadn't drunk enough to cause it. What caused it? Superstitions dialed in sleep.
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Can you write a 250-word story without using the letter "e"?
Ruth's back is curving forwards, folding, softly caving into tomorrow.
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The leaves are telegrams sent from the branches to the wind, saying, “it's over stop don't send kisses stop forget me.”
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Your soap on the shelf in the shower
melts with my every hair wash
and I'll miss it the way I should have missed you.
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6% of anorexics die of their disorder, most of sudden heart failure.
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When Lois finally found him down there, Johnny was wedged between a large rock and the trunk of an old, long since fallen, cottonwood tree. She said as she got to him, she heard his gurgling breath, fighting fiercely to stay alive. When she saw the deep, gathering, red…
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I think he viewed Communion as an act of hygiene that allowed him to go on being fiery and self-determined.
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That afternoon she met me in the lobby of my hotel and we simply smiled at each other in the elevator going up to my room where we sat on the couch for about three hours and told of our lives, of being apart, for so many years, then sensing our time was nearly used up, I…
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Clayton had a grin like the hand of a beast that stretched as long as her gravel road...
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The first thing she remembers is sunshine, then her own dawning, and feeling the lumps on her head and bruises on her face and pain in her heart and aloness of her soul.
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There's a man sitting in my room holding a jar of my ashes. That's what he claims.
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They'd taken so much: ivory, rubber, copper, gold. Wealth for the grabbing. No remorse.
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If This Were Baltimore East A spray of change in the lilies and loose rubber, she pulled close to the wall. She smiled at the trucks, her handful of loot. Hallelujah, he said, converting. West Like 4 miles of cakes, they counted…
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You were busy, moving, alert inconstant motion; packingbooks, clothes, paintings;deciding yes to this, no to that. I was simply tryingto settle somewhere in the space.We'd known it for years when things were in place. Now, this abrupt interruption of…
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Columbus Avenue, I’m the tense union of poor city rich city/
gentrification.
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In all my marriage stories, I am both victim and hero.
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My son thinks he's French.His accent was cute at first, but it's starting to get on my nerves. If he asks for another glass of Beaujolais I'm gonna go to jail for child abuse.Yesterday, I walked upstairs to make him turn his new Jacques Brel album down and I swear it…
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The sky was an over-bleached sheet, stretched to the point of ripping. Everything worn but clean. He was saying he'd be happier if we lived in Canada. The sun seemed very close, like a star at the top of a Christmas tree. Maybe I could pull it down. Our baby had…
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The P-36 used for gunnery exercises was twitchy and stubborn...
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. . . and the last thing you’ll smell will be new-cut pine.
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