The benign lipoma floated in a small jar that Abundio had set on his nightstand when he came back from the doctor’s office. At first, when Dr. Reyes had asked him if he would like to bring it home, Abundio had laughed in the belief that this was nothing more than obtuse doctor humor. But Dr. Reyes did not smile and waited for a response to her question. So, Abundio said: “Sure.”
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When she was seven years old, Lottie killed her first rattlesnake. As long as she could remember, her grandfather had instilled in her that The Good Californian killed the rattlesnake, spared those behind him the danger of snakebite, the venom sapped from their future. She thought it was allegory until she came face-to-Western-face with a Mojave rattlesnake in the scrub out by the foothills.
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With my first blood, a scale appears, hard and iridescent in the soft skin below my arm. In bathroom mirror light, elbow raised, I press and prod, fingertips rusted from menstrual discovery. They trace red, which soaks into the skin and blossoms more scales, reflecting blue and green. I wash my hands. And the scales […]
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If this were the end, May needed to see.
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There’s something about stillness that always comes just before the miracles.
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I laugh. My laugh, this thing that sounds better on somebody else.
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The words blur, become meaningless. You need them to be meaningless.
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You are never really at peace with what you haven’t gotten.
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She gave him a small, relieved laugh. In another world, she replied.
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he lives in closets, stalks young kids, & takes them in the middle of the night.
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I took a deep breath. A long one. And I started rocking again.
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You stood and put your hair up. It made you a different man. You got hard and decided you were why.
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My miraculous children were mine, and mine alone.
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“What do we do about the new build?” I ask. “Do we finish it? Sell it? Finish it, then sell it?”
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I can tell he knows exactly what kind of trouble I like.
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What did it matter? It was June and the salmonfly hatch had begun.
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Appearance aside, my boss took his work seriously.
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When Jeb was old enough to have a family of his own, he hardly ever laid hands on his boys.
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He could spin a Spalding between those eight digits faster and smoother than anyone.
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I used to be able to teach sex without thinking about sex.
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Nothing is not right. There is no indication there has ever been a house.
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Just the two of us. Daddy and me. Charro and escaramuza.
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At the beginning of the trip, we couldn’t wait to reach the end of the world.
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Patience became your lifeline. You almost wrapped it around your neck.
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I cannot stop dreaming about the sixteen-year-old boy I loved madly almost twenty years ago.
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The beach was shrinking. That was how we thought of it at first.
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My job was to help people suspend disbelief.
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It’d been a while since I’d spent time in a body.
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The ground trembles, setting his flesh and bones vibrating.
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She wanted more, but couldn’t fathom releasing what she already had.
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