In a small town, the weary figure of a man walking his dog, chain lead strung slackly between the man’s right hand and the dog who follows a good dozen feet behind him, a dog so aged, overweight, and arthritic it’s a miracle of sorts that it can move at all. Links of the chain drag on the sidewalk. The man wears an ancient army coat with a fur-lined hood and what seem to be ancient fur-lined bedroom slippers on his feet. He never turns his head to regard the dog’s progress or to assess its well-being but in essence ignores it. Soon it will rain, the man says to himself, it will be good for the corn, although the fields outside of town are vast panes of white ice in the last light of late afternoon, with no farmer here giving corn seed a thought for another eight weeks at least.…
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Jane,
I’ve been thinking of you lately. I’m sorry our relationship ended as it did. We were so sympatico, always in the same orbit, my sun to your moon. Remember when we walked the Plaza that April day? We stopped for ice cream, some of the chocolate dripping down your chin. I wiped it off with my sleeve so your white dress wouldn’t smear. Pretty gallant, huh? We laughed about your job as a hairdresser and the weird people you’d meet, that dude with a mohawk and nose rings, the chick with seven colors of hair like a mood ring gone psycho, the grandma with blue hair and perm ringlets so tight her brain was starved for thought. Are you still working there (I can’t imagine why)?…
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A weathered penny lay in a blue transparent case on a well-organized shelf, surrounded by books and little knick-knacks. Its edges were worn, its engravings almost erased by years of hardship. This coin was once proudly minted in 1873 with a flying eagle printed on one side.
The coin’s journey began by passing from hand to hand, pocket to pocket, its shiny surface dulled by countless dealings with machines. One dark day the life of the penny took a tragic turn. It was a cold winter evening when its owner dropped it out of their pocket on New York City Street—forgotten and kicked around by bike wheels, bottoms of shoes, and dog paws.
Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months as the penny lay among the dirt and filth of the ground.…
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Kalpana was sweating.
She could feel a bead of moisture trickle slowly down her lower back as she watched all the
other kids in her class scribbling furiously, filling up their papers with glorious tales of what they did on their summer vacations.
Her own paper lay on her desk, a pristine white canvas untouched by ink.
What could I possibly write about, she fretted, her panic increasing by the second as she watched the timer on the board count down. Kalpana could tell that Mrs. Campbell was the kind of
teacher who would make them all share what they had written, which would be pretty hard to do with nothing but empty space on her paper.
Not for the first time, Kalpana cursed her family’s rotten luck.…
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They stood waiting to cross the intersection as a line of cars lumbered downtown. Bobby fingered the phone in his pocket and glanced over at Gabriella. Gabriella was in the middle of a story about their friends Jessica and Raul. They’d been in couples therapy for almost six months. Raul had become a better listener, which had made Jessica happier, but Raul was happier too.
“With enough effort,” Gabriella said, “relationships can improve.”
Bobby turned his head to watch a cyclist shoot past, pedals whirling.
“It’s amazing,” Bobby said. “Bike riders go so fast on crowded city streets, much faster than cars.” He stroked the hairs of his tiny goatee. “Why don’t more people get around on bikes? Europeans are just smarter than Americans in that way.…
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For someone who bragged about their off-campus apartment, hers sure had a lot more roaches than mine. A small red one skittered near my feet, and I jumped back.
Lainey opened the door. “Hey girl,” she said. The phrase lacked its usual cheeriness.
“Hey,” I said, walking in.
“I’m glad you came,” she said. “We needed to talk.”
She was being all quiet and squirmy, like the tension in the air caused her physical discomfort. She didn’t just express her emotions, she wore them, like a flashy accessory that everybody had to see.
Because we were fighting, I didn’t know if I should assume my typical spot in her green armchair, so I stood awkwardly beside it. I watched her shuffle into her kitchen.
“Well, do you want anything?…
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We stole a gun from the safe and went out to the fields, where the moon lay like a serrated wound on the face of the night sky, and pointed the boom end at cows. Dumb sentinels of pastures overgrazed and nearing depletion. They sat on all fours like a scarecrow pushed over. My buddy held them in his sight for a long time, slowly breathing through his whole body, his skin a membrane he’d been trying to shirk off, and he said to me, almost a whisper, bang.
But that wasn’t good enough for me. When I got big I would go out to bars and sit in the corner and stare out at the shifting forms, men and women in all different kinds of couplings looped together, blended into the same silhouette, and I would try and project my own face onto theirs.…
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