Stories tagged family

Detritus

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Dear Max,I've reached that stage of life where my sins of omission far outweigh my sins of commission.The old preacher who befriended you in that tiny town where you were living led us to the small frame house by the railroad tracks.The dilapidated wooden swing on the porch…

bolt the door: revised & shortened

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After her death I begin to see and hear her ghost. It’s at night she scares me the most. The mumbled groans from behind her bedroom door. Granny, lying there, rigid, arms by her sides, her watery eyes fixed on the ceiling.

Some Will Leave

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There is so much I need to say to him, if only I knew how. The words I used to say now have different meanings, and the words I use, I don’t know their meanings anymore.

Consider The Son

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Don’t forget, I’ve watched the evil you’ve done to the lawn for years, not to mention the chaos you’ve made of the woodshed. Don’t you remember me showing you how to properly stack the wood?

Deviance

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I tried to enlighten them. For my trouble, they tried to have me deprogrammed. I condemned their narrowness of mind; they pitied me my naiveté. I ridiculed their religious bourgeois complacency, but they really didn’t know what I was talking about.

He Was the Worst Man of His Name

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The man he fought today, a cousin from the Joyces, was a tattooed version of his younger days. The lifted face of Che Guevara inked across his right side moving like a reflection across the skin, his arms without a touch of fat, eyes steady.

For A Wounded Boy

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She pulls shame from pockets, tosses it into the brackish air.

Inheritance

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I blame you for my short temper when I go off the handle when my blood runs cold and I can't think straight I can only react. When I say things I don't mean Even if I do. But I am glad for the fire you started inside of me. That time I…

Get Well Soon

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The boy lay silent for a moment, listening to the youth-quake of splashes and giggles that filled the pool. He would have liked to ogle the winsome beautes, the ‘girleens’ as he liked to call them, but seeing as how his mother was present, not to mention

The Graduate

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George Martian had a piece of cinnamon chewing gum in his mouth while he packed, and his jawline went up and down in such a way that it was difficult to tell whether he was happy or sad, bored or reconciled.

Cherry Almond Streusel Cake

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Tomorrow we will eat it in anger.

Gabe

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“Damn!” he said to himself, wondering for the millionth time what he was doing in such a sad line of work. Break time, he decided, grabbing his stash box and locking himself into the freezing cold bathroom to smoke a joint. He emerged thirty minutes la

Condolences

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There was, at that moment, a parade in the man’s head-a thousand pairs of booted feet beating down upon the pavement of his mind. He could almost see band, in their cavalry-blue regimentals, marching forward at a four-count rhythm, his head athrob until

Class Poet

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Mom drank all her life. In fact, she had been drunk all her life. She blamed me for her drinking. “You were a tough little delivery. Thought you’d kill me. If the doc hadn’t fixed me up with a shot of brandy I wouldn’t of survived. Then you were such a li

Love of a Lifetime

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Love is easy when all is going well, but it is one of life’s profound, humbling lessons that few people love you enough to wipe your butt.