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TO BE, OR NOT
As he begins to speak, she realizes this conversation will, as usual, devolve into a monologue. It is always this way, and with a finely honed skill, she, eyes wide open, slips out of this moment. She is certain, correctly so, he will never notice. He will fill in her nods, assume she has heard…
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OR NOT
He screwed up his face into the scowl that fairly shouted to all, “Don’t Ask!”. She knew better but knew also that she had no choice, “What’s the matter now?” “It’s just,” he said, softening a bit, “that I so seldom get the weather I need, much less the weather I want, it’s never the…
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NOTELESS
He says, “I write songs without music, my head is a libretto warehouse.” She says, “You string words like random beads, no two strands the same.” He says, “Symmetry is for those with linear minds, who can’t see out of the tunnel.” She said, “Dysentery is a disease to be avoided particularly by poets.” He…
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SUNDAY MORNING
It is Sunday we sit in the living room each with our lattes she brushing the cat. I sat on the sofa with the Sunday Times. We are listening to radio Hele Norge, unsure why, the Norwegian caroming around our ears, the speakers noticing nothing different. We’re not quite sure how the weather is in…
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AT THE EDGE
He says we are getting to the point where we can see almost to the edge of the universe, see the moment when all that we know was created, see gravitational waves cast off by the collision of neutron stars. She says that is all well and good, but why can’t he see that he…
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LISTEN UP, ABRAHAM
A commentary on a holy book suggested snakes cannot hear one another. Perhaps their deafness goes beyond family and species. It would do much to explain God’s rejection of Eve’s proffered excuse that despite her protestations and those of Adam the snake would not take no for an answer – a deaf snake, after all…
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TAPESTRY
It is like emotions are something you wear on your sleeve, he said, picking at threads of sadness, trying to pry them from the fabric of the moment, never understanding they were the warp of his existence, joy and laughter, compassion and empathy the weft. She said, that is only an illusion, and you…
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COUPLING
He asks when as if it were all a matter of timing as if the immediacy or lack of it somehow really mattered. She would never ask that but would want to know who. She’s far too polite to ever ask why preferring to see the scene in the mind’s eye allowing a thin…
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TOMORROW
As night settles over our house we slip beneath the blanket and imagine the day to come in all of its promise. By morning, reality will set in and I will awake to a day reliant on us to set its course, a captain with no chart and only hope and compassion to steer us…
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FALLING
I stumbled in love with you, she said, because I’ve always had this great fear of falling. It must come from my childhood though I can’t recall any specific incident, just the deep bruises my parents left when they fell, without warning, out of the love I thought had to last forever.