The Year of the Weight
When Navid Abhari was twelve, going to the movies meant parting ways in the theater lobby. He felt very strongly that the only way to watch a movie was among strangers. They would stand in line together to buy popcorn. Then, upon exiting the snack bar, he would say, “Well, …
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Brown-Eyed Recluse
Nine months after Isabelle’s husband left, Isabelle lay on her rumpled bedspread, feeling a rattling in her stomach, like a marble inside her. She drew a hand across her belly protectively and tried to think of what might satisfy the feeling; some toast and jam to start, perhaps. She counted …
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The Candy Bowl
The room whispered to Simon in its language of creaks and fluttering appliances. The small noises seemed to work in uneven patterns like an overheard conversation. It amused him to give substance to these inanimate dialogues and reminded him of the two little girls from the apartment down the hall …
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The Advantages of Being a Desk
–***** I began my day at the office, attempting to scooch so far into the desk that it would envelop me. Though I couldn’t imagine the entirety of the process, I was convinced the desk would look the way invasive vines look when they overtake a sidewalk, a street …
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Open House, Sunday 2-5 pm
It’s a quiet street. “Shoes off, please, or there are booties at the door.” We can’t leave a trace as we traipse through: archeologists in a ruin, projecting civilization into empty rooms. “It’s currently unoccupied,” says the listing agent, as a dozen people squeeze around her. The owners are abroad, …
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The Half-Life of Human Memory
Some health problems attack methodically — cancer, heart disease, the slow drain of the body’s vigor as it ages. But more worrisome are the unpredictable things that happen without warning, when hard luck and outside forces coauthor narratives of tragedy. There’s a reason I often walk the same route home. …
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We Are the Ghosts in the Rafters, Murmuring like Doves
The child is below us, but we dare to whisper, knowing the rain drowns us out; it slaps the window, smearing the moonlight to a buttery bridge across the slick black asphalt of the street below. She’s heard us before, easing doors open with a coy, feline nudge to check …
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Best Wishes for a Speedy Recovery
I. When Donny was a boy, his aunt caught him taking a five-dollar bill from her purse. She grabbed his wrist and told him he had two choices: she could tell his mother, or she could take him to the church to confess to the priest. Donny chose the priest. …
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Seraphic Clowns and Saintly Mourners, an Excerpt
December 24th 1963 11:50 pm EST. Those who are famous, those who are wealthy, those who are elderly, and those with children arrive early and find privilege in the sitting, in their asses growing cold and sore on the hard wooden benches. Austerity now is necessary for fertility eventually; this …
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Lamentation
After a while you become aware of nothing but a culture of feeling, of black days, of schism, evil for evil, the common destiny of the human being getting thrown off course. It’s all one long funeral song. – Bob Dylan The house is smaller than Elizabeth remembers, but the …
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