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They sat in silence, him eating, her watching. He thought how Reed’s whole life was now a finished story, no more surprises, abandoned forever to the past tense. And Hanley still here, looking for new ways to break the world until it apologized.
By Boomer PinchesNovember 2016Since I started this essay, I have found a relationship of sorts and taken a job with a magazine that some friends started. The difference between a happy ending and an unhappy ending is simply the place you decide to stop telling your story.
By Stephen ElliottNovember 2016Tell me how to do it, Father. All of it, I mean. How to be a better fisherman, a better man, a better being on the earth. How to say a grateful prayer for the silver fish given, how to open my two hands and let go of whatever darkness I have gathered.
By Joe WilkinsOctober 2016But what daughter wouldn’t be unnerved by such foreshadowings of the time when her mother won’t be able to take care of herself; when she will have to be cooked for, spoon-fed, helped out of bed, cleaned in the most private of ways? You want your mother to be there to take care of you, to wipe away a smudge with her spit, to make you dinner, to catch you before you fall.
By Amber BurkeOctober 2016July 2016I am troubled by my shapeless fears. My God, these anxieties! Who can live in the modern world without catching his share of them?
Vincent van Gogh
The minute the doctor says colon cancer / you hardly hear anything else. / He says other things, something / about something.
By James ValvisJuly 2016November 12
I saw you on the street today, staring at me, smiling in front of the red sky at sunset. I don’t know what you were doing there, what business ghosts might have to attend to, but thanks for showing up. You don’t know how precious a few seconds on the sidewalk can be until they’re gone.
The dog goes out to look for you. She circumnavigates the / yard. She has been practicing saying, I love you, in every / language.
By Alan Michael ParkerMay 2016I don’t remember feeling fear, only exhilaration and gratitude, like in my dreams. A feeling of ah. The sky was brilliant blue, cloudless. The balloon was yellow. We rose and rose until the pilot turned off the burner, and then it was quiet except for our voices, the creaking basket, and an occasional whoosh of air against nylon. From five thousand feet, everything on the ground seemed small, forgivable.
By Kim ChurchApril 2016Napping with dogs, lodging with strangers, destroying the evidence
By Our ReadersMarch 2016Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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