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Today is the day I say goodbye to Thanksgiving break. Anxiety and depression levels are rising, tonight is a school night after all. No more messing around with cats, movies, music, and road trips. House cleaning and laundry will become more of the chore they were before, and less of a leisure activity, they were…
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I am tempted to begin making my rough puff pastry for Christmas. It’s fully delicious and cheap to make. Yet it is the most labor intensive of all the Christmas delicacies I create, It’s worth every moment it takes for its creation. Butter and flour, rolled, folded, refrigerated and repeated at least five times, it…
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Sherri had her daughter’s heart’s desire. Annie needed a beaded clutch purse to go with her formal dress for the prom, just big enough to hold her lipstick and her glasses. Styles go round and round, and she sure enough saved the pocket book she’d taken to her formal dance years ago. Truth be told,…
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I wouldn’t have been in the grocery store on Thanksgiving morning if I didn’t need to take some dog food and a loaf of bread to my elderly aunt. That’s all she said she needed when I talked to her last night, after I baked her casserole. I would have been at home, binging on…
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He’d been here before and wanted to show her something magnificent.
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“I felt my pulse quicken when lightning lit the sky again, it was far away and showed the line of floating houses”
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John noticed the barrier she’d put between them.
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Lucinda called the suicide hotline.. The counselor’s parting words were to cook something delicious just for herself. The counselor began with, “too hard to be alone, too hard to have a job you hate, too hard to be a senior citizen so far into debt the only way your life insurance would pay off would…
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Goulash
Image generated with AI. “I’m making goulash for dinner tonight. I’m going to use Mom’s recipe too.” said Janice. Mason hoped she remembered the recipe. Sometimes her memory of her Mom’s dishes were sketchy and turned out awful like the soup. He was skeptical of this goulash stuff. It had a weird name to it… Read more
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Solace
Image generated with AI. In the old stories, when life went sideways, the princess had to go to the haunted forest to find the oracle. Diane thought she might as well give it a shot. It was a hundred degrees outside. The creek was ankle deep, the shade dappled and dark. She’d start looking here.… Read more
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Mama’s Revenge
Image generated with AI. “Did I miss a message?” She knew her son’s intentions, she just thought he knew better, she didn’t want to get into a sniping match, so she shut up. Some things were better left unsaid. Mama didn’t like it when her boy kept her car out all night without asking. “I… Read more
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Potato Salad
Image generated with AI When I go outside, summer smells like rain and cut grass. If I sit on my rocking chair on the back porch, I smell the deep green dirt and dead leaves of forest earth supporting my flowers. The deadfall of the yard, dotted with bright pink begonias and orange, fuchsia, and… Read more
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Promise and Truth
Image generated with AI Alice Krudworthy gave up on lying a long time ago. She quit making up shit, but would often omit certain details to bend the thinking of whomever she was talking to. “What did you have for dinner?” Someone would ask innocuously. “Salad, with apples, chickpeas, avocados, tomatoes, and crab. I made… Read more
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Today is the day I say goodbye to Thanksgiving break. Anxiety and depression levels are rising, tonight is a school night after all. No more messing around with cats, movies, music, and road trips. House cleaning and laundry will become more of the chore they were before, and less of a leisure activity, they were…
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I am tempted to begin making my rough puff pastry for Christmas. It’s fully delicious and cheap to make. Yet it is the most labor intensive of all the Christmas delicacies I create, It’s worth every moment it takes for its creation. Butter and flour, rolled, folded, refrigerated and repeated at least five times, it…
-
Sherri had her daughter’s heart’s desire. Annie needed a beaded clutch purse to go with her formal dress for the prom, just big enough to hold her lipstick and her glasses. Styles go round and round, and she sure enough saved the pocket book she’d taken to her formal dance years ago. Truth be told,…
-
I wouldn’t have been in the grocery store on Thanksgiving morning if I didn’t need to take some dog food and a loaf of bread to my elderly aunt. That’s all she said she needed when I talked to her last night, after I baked her casserole. I would have been at home, binging on…
-
He’d been here before and wanted to show her something magnificent.
-
“I felt my pulse quicken when lightning lit the sky again, it was far away and showed the line of floating houses”
-
John noticed the barrier she’d put between them.
-
Lucinda called the suicide hotline.. The counselor’s parting words were to cook something delicious just for herself. The counselor began with, “too hard to be alone, too hard to have a job you hate, too hard to be a senior citizen so far into debt the only way your life insurance would pay off would…
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Good King Wenceslas
“I love the way the full moon glistens on the snow when it’s deep and crisp and even like this, not a mark on it,” the good king said. It was St. Stephen’s Day, Boxing Day, the patron saint of stonemasons and bricklayers, the first martyr, stoned to death for blasphemy. He was also the…
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Gilly and the Peashooters
“Gilly and the Peashooters” was first published in Appalachian Fusion, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Contemporary Appalachian Writing, Vol 27
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Creation sans fear
I don’t have to practice transcendental meditation to create masterworks, maybe I do.
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My Angels
On Monday, my twin premature babies will be twenty-six. I shake my head in disbelief. “We were angels before we were born, and we were sent to your tummy for our wings to grow off so we could take care of you.” Big silver two year old eyes looked up at me. He was speaking…
Devonne Brown 