Category: Original Work
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Answer the phone; assign a call number; refer to case management; refer to counseling; most often, refer to both. Open an intake file, close another one. Ask a client if they’ve been here before—nod politely, like you don’t know they’re lying, when they say no. Re-open their sealed file. Paulina, the receptionist, buzzes the room…
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When I started going to church—yes, as an adult, and yes, of my own free will, I thought I’d lie and tell everyone I was reading in the park. Every Sunday, that’s me, under the monkey tree at Barton Springs, reading in the park. If I hadn’t shared my location, maybe. Most likely, no one…
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Beyond the curve in the road, past the old post office with the barred-up windows and the dead shrubs slumped by the graffiti-covered mailbox, there was a house. It had not been a home in some time. A man lived there, alone, dying, while the ghost of his son sat in his car with the…
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Reaching blindly in the dark, acornsstill grow roots, even when shut in a metal tinin a dark, dry room. I should know,I put them there. I was six years old andI wanted a forest in my closet. I counted outone hundred acorns from beneath the post oakin the front yard, and I waited, and I…
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I do not want to be loved like the sea. I do not want to feel my waves crashing against your shore, to become a predictable, natural menace around which lovers plan their evening picnics. I do not want to be feared like the sailor fears the squall. I do not want to be loved…
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The last time I visited here, I was worshipped; the people birthed and married and fought and died in my honor; they donated the finest scraps from their tables, even when those tables neared empty; they built temples and destroyed monuments for the sake of my glory, and when I finally fled I did so…
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Carbon monoxide poisoning in the public library parking garage — $5 an hour.Anything to relieve the August heat. It’s better than fighting crowds forfreezing springs, spreading like salamanders on algae-ridden rocks. dying grass shores are a bed to stretch catlike and tan our backs beside theonly overpriced tourist destination I still visit alone in this place,…
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From the highest point on the hill, Charlotte could see something glinting gold in the sunlight—about 50 feet away, at the foot of a large rock. She inched down the gravelly slope. The object was a ring, gold, with a single empty facet on the front, which Charlotte knew from her books and the occasional…
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A shotgun in the backyard silences the barking. Don’t misunderstand me, the man has not shot his dog. In the morning, when the man wakes, the bitch will be gone, her only trace the holes she chewed in his once-brand-new suede leather boots. The other dogs will howl until they tire…
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You know the line: it’s not you, it’s me. You were perfect, I swear. Couldn’t have asked for better. Even that one time you flooded out of nowhere, leaving me to drive to the auto repair shop with my pedals nearly underwater. Even when your cruise control stopped working halfway through my two-week drive to…
Emily Vance Brown 