20140129: lodger, trumpet, toast, bar, submarine, survey

The lone lodger surveyed the empty bar and gave a toast, intent on submerging his mind in drink like a submarine in the ocean, hoping the hazy pressure would crush all memories of the strumpet.

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What does letting life happen look like?

My first instinct as a sound bite-loving, modern female, master of the hyperbole, is to say "a hot mess," but that's not exactly true.

It looks more like an untamed rosebush in summer. Its spindly branches droop in every direction lacking the sturdiness and form of a rosebush attentively pruned with purpose. Consequently, the blooms aren't as impressive either. I'm looking at it wondering if it's not too late to start pruning it now, but my inherent apprehension toward deferred gratification has me wary about sacrificing the already existing buds and blooms. After all, no one can argue against the fact that a rose is a rose.

20130416: shorts, fight, printer, rash, monster, worry, ant

I fight with my printer more often than I should considering it does more for me than my piss-ant boyfriend ever did, and I hardly ever sounded a complaint about him. But was I monster for the way I sent him packing? I wonder if it was a rash decision considering I'm at the age now where I worry for myself that my shorts are too short.

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20130413: swimming, snail, lido, sled, bandage, stamina, justice, chimney

The day after Christmas you'll find him at the lido, but he won't be swimming. Floating on his back, his frosty white beard spreads out on the surface of the water like a thousand thin tentacles. The water wraps around him like a soothing bandage cooling the friction burns from shimmying down chimneys. Time seems to crawl at a snail's pace as he wonders if there really is any justice and meaning in in his work. He'll float on, recuperating his mental stamina until it's time again to hitch his sled.

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20121213: elastic, parent, stand, curl

I won't ever doubt my role as a parent to my daughter, a spouse to my wife, or a friend to my mate. But whenever I brush the golden, elastic curls on my little girl's head, suspiciously like those on my best mate's, I can't stand the creeping thought that my friend's best mate, my wife's lover, and my daughter's father might not be me.

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20121130: strategy, sieve

Had I had a strategy I would've poisoned you slowly, built up your tolerance, gotten you hooked. I should have refined my feelings, sifted them with the sugar through the sieve and given you a little bit everyday in your morning coffee, but instead I laid it all in front of you, unrestrained, raw, and burning. Had I had a strategy I would've never known that you were already hopelessly addicted.

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20121128: laugh, cocktail

I know it the moment you laugh, covering your braced teeth with your milky cocktail, our relationship will be like them: a late start and achingly painful but potentially perfect.

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20121002: trellis, porridge, map

She sits at the table eating her breakfast of porridge and thumbing through a travel guide to France. She traces the Seine with her forefinger on the map inside.

From the kitchen window she can see the unkempt trellis rose. Thin and spidery, it looks nothing like what she imagined it would when she had planted it.

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17. 20120817: nursery, voting, soldier, train, code

Following code and voting to rescue the wooden soldier from the sticky maw of their Brobdingnagian tyrant, the nursery toys devised a clever distraction of Cheerios delivered by choo-choo train.

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15. 20120728: brass, race, fatigue, hot plate

Commanders inspected rooms with fervor in a race to get the barracks up to standard before the top brass arrived in pressed fatigues to inspire morale in a group of soldiers wherein the only loss of spirit was a result of their confiscated hot plates.

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10. 20120625: dinner

"Will you join us for dinner?" they asked me from the table.

"I certainly hope not," I answered the roasted chicken and potatoes.

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9. 20120624: soap, dusk, bandit, ink, idiot, fish, danger, revenge

Bandits fish at dusk, when dark spreads like ink across a page and the moon sits in the sky like a thick round of soap, for idiots with no sense of danger and no taste for revenge.

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4. 20120616: reform, increments, parliament, lift, doughnut

As a portly, aging member of parliament it would have served him well to be more concerned about the bill in his hand that proposed a reform of his salary increments. But inside the small space of the lift, away from eyes that criticized, he was just a man and his doughnut.

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3. 20120615: attack, nurse, ham, boxing, hinge

I had to go to the emergency room to get stitched up. I told the attractive nurse that it was from boxing. The black eye was from boxing, but black eyes don't need stitches.

The truth was I was attacked: taunting the cat near a cupboard door with broken hinges will draw blood.

My lie smelled like honey baked ham and kitty litter.

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1. 20120613: fur, high jump, coronation

Somehow it seemed appropriate for her to put on her fur stole to watch the coronation ceremony on the television. He looked a lot shorter on screen for a man of his stature and status. She stroked the pelt around her shoulders as she wondered if that rumor about him was true: an illicit love affair with a Ukrainian high jumper?

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