43473033
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Once you start telling the truth it's hard to quit. You look around and reasons are everywhere. It's like a new appliance, truth-telling, a can opener that's so good you barely have to turn it.On the phone my sister asks me why I don't come out and see her in San…
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154323
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Once Mom finally came to terms with the fact that my brother was gay, she became convinced he was a serial killer. “He has all the signs,” she told me as she trimmed my hair. “Signs?” I asked, watching her in the…
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189367
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Her arm rests at her feet on the platform. She wears the remains of tiny leather boots. She is naked except for her boots. For a hundred years she wore a Russian dancer’s dress.
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3521
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Mine reads: Continued involvement of a discreditable nature with civilian and military authorities. I was nineteen years old when I watched the Yeoman First Class type those words, and all I could think to say was, “Oh, come on now.”
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213434
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In some parts of town, people are not allowed to grow vegetables because of the plutonium used in the Lab. Three local parks were recently found to be contaminated.
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800
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Paul brings home Thai take-out for dinner. I spoon pad thai onto Ella’s plate, then cut the noodles into inch-long sections so she doesn’t choke.
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112880
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“You always use that as a crutch. You, a sixteen year old girl. The way you were…” She looked at me, shaking her head, looking at my body as if remembering some wrong, some thing that should not have been.
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118720
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Her mother told her once: "Don't be no whore, Fe-fe."
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106310
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It was the middle of May when I found out my teacher was screwing my mother.
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10100
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He shuffled in like an old lady and crashed into the seat, pulling his legs into his torso as best he could. He closed his eyes and moaned wretchedly. When he spoke, it was barely a whisper: “Tell me when it’s been ten minutes.”
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2498148
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Just stay at home woman, and do your job /
wash those dishes, mama, its what I pays you for
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15202112
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She could live there forever, in that smokey memory...
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10620
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My father continued to look over a copy of ‘Their Eyes were Watching God.’ He was penniless in his enthusiasm.
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020
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In my dream, his head is pricked with needles as in the practice of acupuncture. I ask him how he is doing, what death is like. He tells me it is terrible. He cries. I wake and I am not comforted.
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9396
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I'm taking everything off she announces, clawing at her clothes. A new scar gleams on her mended hip. Where did this come from, where is it going? A cross-hatched seam in the center of a body's landslide. A cradle for children, a long-ago man; a…
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