Casey was pricing vinyl when she walked in. The door was open. It was early, and he normally greeted customers when he was alone, but he figured it was a regular, poking through the newest used stuff. That or Sean forgot something. Casey continued with the stack until he heard the flutter of a coat and the scrape of approaching feet. When a woman cleared her throat, he looked up.
“Not going to ask if you can help me?”
“Can I help you?”
“I guess you trust people here. Not sure I would.”
He yawned. “What brings you to Seattle?”
“Robert’s nephew, Scott. Remember him? He’s getting married.”
“Why here—doesn’t he live in L.A.?”
“His wife and her family. They’re all from Tacoma.”
“And where’s Robert?”…
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I sat on the 18 -inch cement ledge that jutted out from the museum wall at the South entrance and looked at the fountain in front of me. It boasts 60 spouts, with a 6 -foot geyser of foaming water coming from each one. It is a big, oval- shaped fountain with a lip wide enough that sometimes you see young boys rollerblading around it, though they usually wipe out. Sometimes a particularly streamlined cyclist will attempt the circuit and jump off just as the curve tightens at either end.
Noontime. And even though fall was approaching, the sun was strong enough that I could sit out with only a sweater over my sleeveless dress, leftover from the summer. It wasn’t my lunch hour for I take that at 2:00 o’clock, a necessary defense against the long afternoons.…
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What’s been has been. What’s done is done. Now you
can only decide what you’re going to do
about it, for one; and then say, for two,
Let’s Do It! These concerns are ethical,
the strange marriage of the emotional,
a heart’s involvement, and the logical,
a mind’s. But neither aspect’s any good
without resolve to do—not what you would
or might, having determined that you could,
but should and must, for you now see it’s right,
like someone blind given a spark of sight.
*
Of course it will be difficult to start.
That’s why it’s called a Difficulty, friend.
Taking action means we must take heart;
giving over means we just pretend.
Inertia, loud as leaders of a faction
and expert in invisibility,
seeming stillness, and false recusancy
is the eternal enemy of Action,
particularly one that bucks a trend;
eternal ally of The Sloth Within
Us, it will terrorize until The End—
unless we notice, pause, resolve, begin.…
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Last-minute shoppers were making frenzied purchases as the last rays of warmth died outside the mall. Seasonal malaise whistled in through cracks around the windows and doors and through the bullet holes from last summer’s drive-by shooting. Security had tightened, then, just like it tightened when that little boy went missing the summer before that and that makeup counter girl was strangled in the parking lot a year or two before that. Somehow, the mall only ever had its big problems when the weather was so hot the glass roof of the food court sweated. That’s why the security guard was playing on his phone when Santa Claus pulled an AR-15 out of his sack.
– AJ Miller…
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My most cherished,
Fate keeps pulling us together. Entwined like the vines on your family lake house in Granby. Let’s take a trip there someday! Perhaps that can be where we share our vows? It would make for a beautiful wedding spot. Don’t worry, I’m not proposing quite yet, just considering our future, which is paramount because women like you enjoy planning ahead and preparing.
I adored the blue flower sundress you wore on our date the other night. The movie was hilarious! I rarely like movies but watching you laugh just brightens my day. I know you felt self conscious about your appearance but you shouldn’t; the dress fit your frame perfectly and your hair looks pretty curled.
Take these flowers, one for everyday we’ve been together.…
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After she figured out what to do with her life
or the rest of her life or maybe just next in her life
she discovered the years months weeks days hours
minutes seconds lining up and waiting to be filled
although with what exactly wasn’t terribly clear.
Here was the question behind all the others:
what to do with this seemingly endless span that
was in fact finite or the fact that her demise was
only a matter of time and yet the exact instant in
all its startling specificity could never be divined
or the way mortality made a mockery of her effort
to figure out what to do next given her life might
end at any moment this seemingly ceaseless array
of years months weeks days hours minutes seconds
needing to be used lived spent then suddenly not.…
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Dunkin is out of vanilla syrup for your mid-afternoon latte. You get it anyway, but can’t bring yourself to drink it. A white Escalade behind you has cruise set to breakneck. Your eyelids droop. I should get over, you think. There’s nowhere to the right. Your eyes flick up and over, check the rear, check the driver’s side. The Escalade is still there. There’s a gap on the left. You start to jump lanes, dipping into a pothole that cradles your tire. Fleetingly, you dream the hollow is a large, black dog. You hit the brakes. The Escalade doesn’t.
– AJ Miller…
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