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  • Monday Mountain Stew

    Monday Mountain Stew

    a letter to the dead… Hey Dad, it’s Monday again.I’m writing from where the cold snap brokeat 39 degrees, the mountains holding their breathlike a man waiting for test results.I wonder what sky you’re under now,if heaven is a temperature,a feeling of warmth after a long chill. Mom is okay. She still watches the news,gets

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  • Broken

    Broken

    A broken clock is correct twice a day. It strikes true.Its hands remain motionless.Gears, sprockets, jewels, springs—all frozen. You and me?Two pictures. The clock keeps timethe same way you and I do— twice a day,working,doing time.

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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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  • 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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  • Lobo me

    Lobo me

    I thought how you thought of yourself as the moon— brilliantly white light, a dot of hope in eternal black. But even your light wasn’t yours. Reflection. And the howling below—that was real. Lobo, me. Smooth surface. You could trick yourself into seeing a smile there. But the truth: scars skip the surface, sink steeply—pieces

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  • The Bill

    Hey. Hey, I said, and wondered when she had stopped saying Hi baby, sweetheart, well hello there—any of the phrases I’d looked forward to hearing as she tried her hardest to make the ordinary less than. I was surprised she answered at all. Ninety-five percent of the time I got her voicemail, which in the

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  • Where Are Your Lips

    Where Are Your Lips

    “Come closer—let the room learn our names from your breath on my neck.” Where are your lips—with someone else,or only with the idea of someone else?It’s strange how the imaginedcan cut so precisely,like a scene edited to shine. Where is your touch,those secret letters you trace on my back?You smile when I ask,“What did that

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  • Intersection

    Intersection

    October 21, 2025 I tried to find meaning in the numbers today,arranging them forward and backward,stacking them like tired integers.They all fall in their twenties,and perhaps that is meaning enough. Today is like any other dayonly in this: it will not return.This notch on the yardstick of time,rigid, measured, singular,exists for me alone.The One who

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  • Handlebars

    Handlebars

    I had given myself a week to understand dying this time around. The news arrived with a percentage—fifty-fifty—which meant either everything or nothing, depending on how I chose to look at things as they stood. There would be no worrying about having saved enough, no being a burden to my children and what remained of

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  • Neverland is a Direction

    Neverland is a Direction

    I feel the air against my face,tugging the hair from my eyes.The sun sings its same old refrain,assuring me the day has no end,and this kingdom of dirt and lightis mine to rule. Come here, friend, I tell a ladybug,and study her through the glass,a tiny iced donut from Winchell’s shop.When I stare too long,wings

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