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  • Thursday’s Clarity

    Thursday’s Clarity

    Good morning, Thursday. The week is nearly over. January is already in full swing—by next week, we’ll be halfway through the month. I went to the eye doctor yesterday. Doctor M has been my optometrist for over twelve years now. It’s a comfort, walking in and not having to introduce yourself all over again. She

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  • Gardens

    Gardens

    Fifty words hardly seems a story. At 57 I’m over by seven,trying to write an endingappropriate to the characters. This life made moviewhere happily ever afteris six feet below dirt— fodder for red roses to bloomwith thorns that cut deep enoughto match.

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  • The Chirp

    The Chirp

    Hey Dad!Her tiny voice—a small, blue birdat the nest’s edge.She’d remembered her way home,but her mom wasn’t there,and I hadn’t set footthere in years. Hey sweet pea, great to hear your voice.How’s work, your new place, your husband?It sounded strange—my own words,a slow fall from grace. Chirp, chirp, she went on,a new song I’d never

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  • Feat

    Feat

    I don’t trust white feet. If they haven’t seen the sun,how could they ever walk in my shoes?Or pretend to. Feet in robes?Think flip-flops—hardly up to the task,if you ask me. Blindfolded,they go where they’re told,peeking only at day’s end,no longer pretendingthey don’t smell,or that they’re a size smaller, larger,girl, boy. Brown, cracked,leather stretched over

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  • Kind of Blue in Pasadena

    Kind of Blue in Pasadena

    …Texas. Miles came on smooth,took the wrinkle outof speakers too tinnyfor his magic. The skyline could have been Tokyo,Manhattan, Paris,but it wasn’t—it was Pasadena. I settled for a Pasadena somewhere in Texas,not even California,sandwiched at Jake’s Baron a Taco Tuesday,35 floors of heat abovea mixed-use zoning fiasco,where business sucks bad enoughthey serve two-dollar fish tacos.

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  • Cigarettes after Sex

    Cigarettes after Sex

    The Chapter or: How Pat Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Algorithm It was immediate. It was what was needed. It was a point in a pointillism canvas of a prosaic mosaic rendering of the new times. Pat rushed to get thoughts down in the early hours of the morning. The start was journaling

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  • Native Son, Still Awake

    Native Son, Still Awake

    It’s 3:40 in the morning, and I’ve been here before. More times now than I care to remember.I wake up maybe a little before, open my eyes, stare off into darkness and think I can make out shadows within the stark black. I bring my hands close to my face and check—I can’t see them.

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  • I Believe; Help My Unbelief

    I Believe; Help My Unbelief

    November 9, 2025 Father, I believe; help me with my unbelief. Most honest thing anyone ever said to God. This father with a sick kid, desperate, saying yes and no in the same breath. That’s it. That’s the whole deal. The story’s simple enough. God comes down, walks around, dies, comes back. Believe it and

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  • Different Ways to Go White

    Different Ways to Go White

    Garth Mitchell had a crooked smile. He’d wrinkle and scrunch his nose, squint his eyes—hoped his nose was pushing down the middle of his upper lip in equal measure, making the edges rise. It was a wreck of a smile, all work and no reward. His hair went white at thirty-two, and he was quick

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  • That Tracks.

    That Tracks.

    The market was sliding and gold with it. If there were rules once, they weren’t working. Jack crumpled a Post-it. A buddy’s buddy said Go West Young Man in the seventh. Go West went south. Jack lost his reserve. He knew better. He didn’t. He scratched the bottoms of his front pockets—jeans worn thin at

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