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Running away from your life, hiding from a would-be rapist, watching the neighborly veneer crack after two hurricanes
By Our ReadersMay 2005I was riding in the back seat of my Aunt Belle’s Cadillac when my cousin Joanie whispered, “You want some gum?” then leaned over to me and stuck her tongue in my mouth. When she sat back, smiling, I found that she’d left her gum behind. It was gnarled and cold and foreign-tasting, I suppose because it was wet with someone else’s saliva.
By Eric AndersonMay 2005A thick canopy of smells — car exhaust, rotting vegetables, melting tar — hung in the sweltering midafternoon air. As I stepped onto a narrow side street to escape the noise and crowds, my left leg buckled beneath me, and I fell down in a puddle of motor oil in front of a sidewalk stand.
By Emily RappApril 2005The first time he takes a shower after coming home, he looks himself over: Ten fingers. Ten toes. No scars beyond the ones he collected in childhood.
By Bruce Holland RogersApril 2005Clipping perfect long-stemmed roses, having failed as a teacher, keeping people happy while they piss away all their money playing high-limit baccarat and blackjack
By Our ReadersFebruary 2005My sister is a writer. She writes terrible things about me. She thinks she is telling the family secrets, but we all think she’s hysterical.
By Jenny BitnerJanuary 2005I’m sitting in my parents’ living room, listening to my older brother, Ben, tell the family how he’s recently discovered that his phone is being tapped. His tone is casual, even upbeat, as if he were discussing a stretch of unusually good weather.
By Alan CraigDecember 2004She tries to catch her breath, takes tissue after tissue from my box. I give her a glass of water, and we do some deep-breathing exercises. I tell her to go slowly. I assure her that the past is over, although I know it is a lie. The past is alive. It is with us every moment, our lives slim transparencies between past and present.
By Michelle Cacho-NegreteDecember 2004To me, grace comes from an examination of one’s life in which you realize that you don’t deserve what you’re getting, yet you’re getting it anyway. That is the experience of grace, both practically and spiritually. If you want to put it in secular terms, it’s the difference between seeing life as an entitlement and seeing it as a gift.
By Angela WinterDecember 2004Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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