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On Friday evenings they play Scrabble, a whole crowd of them. They use books to keep score, page numbers, instead of a long column of pencil scratches. They organize themselves into teams; the English majors all together, versus biology, history and horn players. She and he…
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148665
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At age eleven, I murder the coffee table. I gouge with every available implement: thumbtacks, Lefty scissors, the plastic hand of my Barbie accomplice (who really should have known better). It is a slow death. In the end, there is nowhere to hide the body. When I am…
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146931
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I have never met Joe’s brother, of course.
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122931
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The fabric on the waiting room chairs is stained and matted, but has been cleaned over and over.
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17392310
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Our house was big, red brick, with off-white walls that watched over us while we slept, while we prayed for our souls to be kept, while we shared bath water and bunk beds and the secret of the back closet we will die with and never reveal.
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121782
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The midsummer sky is black above us when I hear Dad say my name, quiet like I’ve never heard before. I let my hands drop away from my face and crawl towards him.
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112342
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Had this been a film, I’d have seen you at once. Extreme close-up: my finger on the green button that opens the door to the park. Long shot: my leaving my bike at the entrance. Slow shot: my walking down the narrow stone path.
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1523114
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Upon learning the fetus has fingernails, Missy texts her boyfriend: It has nails! He won’t reply because he’s just left for war, but she does it just the same.
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95541
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Dragonfly She danced out of the burning rubble, wrapped in a shawl made of iridescent silk. It must have been her grandmother's. Her arms were wings, the silk translucent and fluttering. Fire fell from the sky. Thatched roofs, walls of mud-daubed sticks, the huts…
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1551138
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I had been in bed for a couple of days and by this I mean sleeping for fifteen or sixteen hours at a time. I don’t think that I believed in God anymore. I no longer knew how to stay awake.
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156172
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I pass the Grief Benches on my way to work. No one is on them today. Last night I saw a couple there, him wet eyed and her with her head down. She scrunched her eyes tight as I passed and I remember thinking she was a fraud. It's alright if you don't want
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5017147
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The plumber has three lives left or else he is already dead.
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1396171
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We are in search of free hor d’oeuvres, me and Jane – Jane from H.R., Jane who is exactly as plain as her name implies, Jane, who, for now anyway, for this company retreat, is my kindred spirit in broke-ass hangover land.
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119911
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Brian had spent the morning filling out applications all over Knox County, and by noon he was more than ready to call it a day. But apparently there was one last squirt of virtue in him, because heading home he saw a Help…
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103140
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We’ve already agreed on a date when Jack posts some new pictures of himself. I have to swallow. Hard. In four days Jack’s become twenty years older!
On Thursday, a boyish thirty-something was smiling at me from my PC. This Monday I find myself stari
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105031
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As a rule, she calls me whenever she’s waiting for her train or bus. ‘Hiya… How’s life-’ she starts off sweetly. Even though I should know better by now, I can only respond in the same old way. I’ll say: ‘Hi Kate!’. Next, I’ll try to te
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126700
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You can’t start living in The Netherlands just like that; you need to be registered first. Once an official has confirmed you’re the person you claim to be, you can start in a job. Once an employer has confirmed you’re employed, you can apply for yo
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86300
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Less than a week ago, I was still a republican. It’s strange what an invitation for a job interview at the Palace does with your principles.
I’m especially nervous because the interview’s late in the afternoon. I could go to the be
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148056
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This violin of oneself, this rough strum of I, arc of wing over thick rib. This masturbatory chirping like the meat of God clenched in your teeth, an apostrophe giving aloneness possession over the inarticulate, a bridge between chords.
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153310
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Hope wakes starving/
in the storm,/
to off and hunt.
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114810
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But that night we were happy, looking all around at the bright lights of the several cities that we could see.
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183894
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It was there, and then it wasn’t, the victim of a magician or a swooping seabird.
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110121
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In the house by a kidney-shaped lake, her grandfather was speaking to a stranger about a foreign war that had never ended, had spread close to home.
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102683
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No one spoke to me. I hid behind my desk coloring neon hairdos on rock stars. When I asked my mother how to make friends, she pulled a framed needlepoint from a bureau: To be a friend is to make a friend. She said, “Never forget that.” I met a boy named Billy,…
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164953
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They giggled at me when they thought I was asleep, giggled at the size of my balls, which had never been a problem before her. Said it was because of my tiny balls that we only had two children.
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538512
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Madeleines, which he hadn’t touched in twelve years, had a place in all this, were accessories in his daughter’s violation.
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101451
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A dead deer on the side of the road and the older boys not listening to her as they stab its eye with a stick.
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128220
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Laura's last day did not end the way she expected. She expected her last day as a housekeeper to proceed as had the others — beginning in the kitchen as she sprinkled scouring powder across the stovetop, and ending in the parlor, as she vacuumed and shimmied to …
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101510
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Tiny was my daughter. Or what was left of her. A mucous-y chunk of what was once in my womb and then wasn’t.
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3219184
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I’m not sure if it’s Punkin or her pink fuzzy bunny slippers that I love.
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