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The afternoon I was born, my father brought my two older brothers and my sister to the hospital with him, but back then, they wouldn’t let children in to visit. My father and siblings all stood on the grass below my mother’s room and called up to her.
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174110
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Mark looked at the barrel. Will had filled it to within inches of the top, and that meant the water was cold enough to take away breath, cold enough to make lips turn blue. Even if it had sat all day in the sun, the bottom would be cold, but now, after
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149661
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“Your children are beautiful,” she said, handing back his wallet after removing several bills. Her mouth was fringed by bitten-off melon lipstick, a calm kind of mad. She told him to call her Sally, “like the song McCartney rips his lungs on.” She…
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162972
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The screams and howls of other people's children set him on edge. But he struggled to stay cheerful. They had season passes, so the visits there cost nothing and it had consequently become a weekly tradition to go. The children had not, as far as he could
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3900
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Karina used to point at boys on the street and tell me if they were Puerto Rican or Dominican, like those were the only two things you could be. One time she pointed out a Puerto Rican boy and I said, “Oh, like your father, Julio.” She stopped walking
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172120
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At first she kept repeating "I don’t know why he's doing this" as if the cops thought she was mixed up in it somehow. When they convinced her that all she needed to do was talk to her brother and tell him to give himself up, she looked hopeless.
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5362
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Two writers sat down for a meal, carefully avoiding any talk of their art.
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381147
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When a hole opened in the courtyard, the kids threw pennies down and called it the wishing well.
We said, "Someone must have dug it."
When the hole opened wider, we said, "Someone must still be digging."
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6831
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The unicorn sat next to God
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160281
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We sat in a row on the long couch and no one's legs could reach the floor. Granddaddy took the first one the kid who no one knew and said to us "the rest of you stay put."
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84410
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It was ridiculous. We were only in 3rd grade. How can anyone know at that age, only eight, that Judy F. was the girl he was meant to be with for the rest of their lives?
But that was how Stephen O. behaved. As if they both already knew this, and they
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133299
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One year it rained, and no one wanted to go. You were sick another year. Mom called it monkey pox, which Dad and I thought was hilarious. I went with Annie, who told the naval…
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16696
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I love your free spirit he says.
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194611
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A cat terrorizes a small family. They fight back.
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48283
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...the peel feeds through her fingers in a tantalising spiral that is devoured by the eyes at her feet...
[164 words]
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