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Measurable Time
INT – A MODEST DWELLING – LATE NIGHT The slim frame of ALEC passes a doorway where a man with grey in his beard sits facing the other direction. BARRY stirs in his chair and calls the figure he hears rustling in the other room to come speak with him. BARRY speaks, inaudibly, to the […]
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The Vacuum Dance
Maid and maiden in one, collecting dirt and dust brought down by time itself, is oft confined to her wayward thoughts. No matter the lonely durations when futile impresses nullify her persisting mind, gladness is pinned on her tired heart. Within dusting and polishing and scrubbing and scraping dried food pieces from dinnerware, one task […]
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Purporting Romance Mythically
Romance is an exercise in myth building. When a new relationship is on the rise, budding rosebuds are gathered while the wilted are buried away. We pull together moments and save artifacts and write a history for our lives as newly paired duos. We destroy, to an extent, our former lives. We become revisionist historians, […]
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Inkwell Reflections for Miss Dickinson
White dress white dress how softly compressed prismatic coordinates printed over a spectrum of threads matching sheets covering the little table and chairs in the upper room of consciousness. White—no color or all the colors at once? All the bright or all the dark the stark dark hair and the pale face pale arms pale […]
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A Story About Running
“So, it’s a story about love?” “No. It’s a story about running.” “Oh. Tell it again. I must not have been listening.” “Way back when your mom and I used to share an apartment, I used to go running. I went nearly every day. And nearly every day, I would ask your mom to come […]
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Seeing the Signs
Observing signs in the modern age. In the city… There’s a man standing facing the flow of foot traffic when I get to the train station. I notice an easel stand with a sign clipped from fasteners on the top edge. The thick black words on the sign ask of the passersby, “Do you know […]
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A Mass Engraving
Requests come in daily. They are from loved ones wanting a rubbing from the Wall. A rubbing of the engraving they have requested be mailed to them. Loved ones who are unable to make the trip to the capitol. Loved ones who will not see their own eyes staring back from the glassy black wall. […]
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Softly-Filtered Wool Sweaters
The drives seemed to be endless, those he took with his father. An endless motor hum, and endless drone of rubber on the highway, an endless silence choking the air between driver and passenger. The silence was unbearable. Paul always wondered what was going through the older man’s mind as he sat silent behind the […]
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Lights on the Farmhouse Table
Retrospect would have had me listen a whole lot closer when Dale Parish first told me about the lights. You know what they say about hindsight. Dale lived his whole life on his family’s farm. Ever since grade school, he’d start first period having already been up at least four hours. The rest of us […]
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Visiting Gram
“She’s doing much better today, dear,” the portly woman behind the desk tells me as I sign my name on the guest registry. This marks my eighth time here in four weeks. I have signed and dated this page eight times, each time wishing it would be the last. You might think I wouldn’t have […]
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Laughter Saves Lives
Where is the worth in waiting? I have been locked in stasis, hungry for change (as I’ve come to define waiting), but cannot find all that much to value there. Be present. Instead of expelling your desire waiting for summer, embrace winter. Summer will come regardless. Don’t just give up on what you can accomplish […]
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Invoking the Blank Page
I am looking to you, Blank Page, for help. I woke today with Worry. While I was able to slough off the morning blanket, Worry persisted its shroud about me. An invisible source secures a tight hold around the top of my head. It clamps the innards of my chest. The cinches have been there […]
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In the Absence of Swans
Boston, March 2015. The garden awakens from a winter deeper than any in recent public memory. The last in a line of four girls seated on the pond’s perimeter screams dramatic fury as winged bodies, en route to plunder the thawing earth, whisk behind her head. “Where do the swan boats go in the winter?” […]
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Our Complicated Public Union
Walk beneath my canopy, aerial assaults pinging as you find a pace. In April’s warm mist your cheeks I keep dry. Hold me and I hold you, the infant wrapped in the folds of her mother’s arms. On clear days you hide me and I take comfort in the act. Hidden on the floor of […]
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Fodder for Retrospect
The limp expression on his face was nothing new, but it still tore gently into Monica’s chest each time she looked at her son. With each tear in the fabric of motherhood, she buried the urge to give up, to send him to another doctor, to admit to the nagging suspicion that she might be […]
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Sophisticating the Rudimentary 