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And Words Are All I Have
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He didn’t deserve you anyway, they tell you to cheer you up
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when you see your boyfriend hand in hand with another
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just hours after he left your bed.
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Or maybe your daughter flipped the finger to her controlling camp counsellor,
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forcing you to borrow a car to go pick her up.
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Have at it. Damn the damned U-boats.
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May you flourish like a girl who feels seen for the first time.
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May your robust joy overwhelm all your sorrows, pound them to dust.
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May it fortify you in the blue black dusk.
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But for those who face the dawn of each day with active dread,
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like a headmistress’ imminent scolding,
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those of you with random headaches that blur your vision in the mirror,
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leave you gasping for air.
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those with a frontal lobe resigned to nothingness,
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may you be spared from friends who counsel,
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what a thing it is to suffer and be strong, then ask, pensively, with a tilt of their heads, What might your sickness be asking of you?
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May they just keep their mouths shut and give you Reese’s Pieces and peonies the size of dinner plates, and maybe an Edward Hopper drawing to prop at the foot of your bed so you can pull up a stool any time you like in his wistful midnight café.
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If there are any heavens my mother will all by herself have one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley. It will be a heaven of robust yellow roses, with thick notched stems not prone to bending. The blooms will be embarrassingly, sinfully fragrant, the size of baseballs when fully blazing. They’ll radiate light …
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Pink Angora How wrong we can be about the things we think will save us... I walked behind them on the way home after the usual Saturday night skating at the small town's arena. He was the high school all-star, she the ice ballerina. She wore pink angora mittens, and a matching beret perched at what seemed the …
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