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Judith Sara Gelt's avatar

The cassette player’s start and stop buttons made her too anxious to play a tape without me standing there to operate the machine, and when the story did play, her forehead creased, and her eyes searched the air as the words turned unruly toddlers, defiant and surly, bouncing off the walls, refusing to settle in her lap.

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Colin's avatar

her acetylene eyes burn low and based on this heady feeling the night is oxygen-rich

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PK Robbins Walzer's avatar

Alcohol is social antifreeze. Sweet and enticing, it thaws those at risk of freezing up but poisons those whose thirst drives them to self-destruction.

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Heather Brown Barrett's avatar

A smirk of moon climbs the quiet hours.

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Marlene Cullen's avatar

Removing the dead leaves was as easy as pulling a wad of cotton candy from its paper cone holder.

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Nikita Eaton-Lusignan's avatar

She knocked on wood so hard her knuckles bled.

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Joseph Paulson's avatar

Atlas was a single mother.

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Sarah Woo's avatar

We tumbled down the river, our translucent bodies turned pink by the blazing sun, our shattered shells tossed onto the banks—hurried, losing time.

(I’ve been eating shrimp lately)

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caley henderson's avatar

Grief is an old-growth tree uprooting from my chest.

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Yardena Schwersky's avatar

From a poem describing the bruising of a broken toe: I am swollen with color, an untenable sunset.

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Annie Barker's avatar

I know loss as waves, some gentle swells that rock me behind the scenes like the lapping low Gulf tide of my childhood summers on Galveston Beach, others rough surges that crash into me with the roaring rush of a mountain waterfall, pounding and pounding me down a steep, rocky cliff, moving too fast for me to find a toehold. (from a WIP)

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Chelsea Utecht's avatar

The acrid smell of urine was a knife that cut through Emily’s dreams.

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Mike Halow's avatar

Writing is a cry for self.

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Jennifer A. Weigand, Writer's avatar

Your departed soul is a light bent and fractured through a prism, the rainbow shards pinwheeling on my wall, until I step into the light and they dance atop my heart.

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Muireann O'Callaghan's avatar

Nostalgia is a tongue touching crabapple-flavored lipstick.

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Marjorie Lacombe's avatar

My parents say I've lost all religion, but I assure them: secondhand shopping is gospel.

“Where’s the faith?” they ask.

“Come,” I say. “Sit on my couch.”

God only knows what it’s been through.

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