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And Words Are All I Have
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Sadness has taught me a thousand times more in my life
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I’m due at the care and share thrift store
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where I volunteer twice a week,
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in this frozen outpost where
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outsiders are viewed suspiciously,
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and more people smoke than don’t,
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where politicians make speeches
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about the permanently unemployed,
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and the permanently unemployed
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make speeches about their exes,
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the weather, and the Young and the Restless.
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They carry the same slack-jawed look of disappointment
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I’ve seen in small towns all my life,
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as if they’d checked it off in a column somewhere.
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It’s in the way they speak to their children,
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the way they distrust happiness,
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brush the hair away from their faces,
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the way they wave goodbye.
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I keep a lookout for shoes for Helen,
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for her three kids under five.
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Pete needs a suit, he’s got a wedding in the city in June.
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Shy, sad Leonard wants a book on pirates.
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all the damaged trooping in like clockwork,
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resignation their calling card,
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something that will make a difference,
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Somewhere between the Canna lilies and the Delphinium Blue King, he started in on mask wearers. A local, I could tell, the turns of phrase and the mandatory team jersey. He had already launched into his rant when I pulled my truck into the lot of the garden centre, sermonizing before a small sullen crowd about the Nano particles …
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