Tag: break up

All Stories, General Fiction

What’s Left by Todd Dodson

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He settled the last of the old Amazon boxes in the bed of the pickup, an intractable, unstrung guitar neck poking out from the middle, with the faded moon looming eerie in the midday sky like the cover of some science fiction paperback. He threw a blue tarp over the mess, then took his time stitching a length of twine through the grommets, around the cleats, a clever hitch knot at the end, even opening the driver’s side door before finally, finally turning to me standing in the hot pea gravel, glass of ice tea melting in my hand, before saying, “Well, that’s it.”      

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All Stories, General Fiction

Your Grief Doesn’t Interest Me by Simon Nadel

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“You got old early.”

Hannah didn’t need to finish the thought. She’d already said it so many times, and then, when she got tired of saying it, she left. But even when she came back to pick up this or that, she sometimes would say it again, maybe for old time’s sake. “You got old early when you lost your job and started spending your days getting way too wrapped up in the neighbors’ business.” I never had a good response, even though clearly I had plenty of time to come up with one.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Paper-Lined Tables by Rachel Sievers

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“Will you bring me something to drink from the kitchen?” She asks with her feet up on the couch. I swivel from my perch looking out the kitchen window. The open floor plan of the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house makes it easy to see the bottoms of her feet from where they lay on top of the armrest of our couch. Her neon pink socks have white writing that read: if you can read this bring me wine. I consider her socks and reach into the walnut cabinet and pull out a water glass, filling it directly from the sink. I bring her the full glass and hold it out to her. She doesn’t look up from her phone but grabs the water glass and brings it to her pale and chapped lips. She needs to drink more water.

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All Stories, Romance

When the Tabloids Ate My Best Friend by Marco Etheridge

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The morning sun assaulted every nerve ending in my shattered brain and that same vicious sun illuminated the headline that hovered before my bleary eyes: Bigfoot’s Miraculous Aqua-Baby Discovered. I tried to focus, then I tried to blink it all away. Miserable failure was the result on both counts. I did not conjure clarity, nor did the strange bedroom disappear. I was forced to ask myself that most critical question. Where the fuck was I?

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

How to Write a Hit Song by Les Bohem

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Laying the Groundwork for a Hit

  1. Choose between digital or physical production.
  2. Select a theme.
  3. Draft lyrics that are timeless.
  4. Split your lyrics into syllables on staff paper.

Composing a Hit

  1. Set the tempo.
  2. Write the bass line.
  3. Design a catchy melody.

wikiHow, “How to Write a Hit Song”

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All Stories, General Fiction

Elon by Olivia Parkinson

literallystories2014

The day she left me, she left the fish. The gloopy, dead-brained goldfish sitting in our room. My room now, fuck her. I don’t miss her. She used to ask her if I missed her when she went away in the summer- not really I’d say, she’d come back in three weeks. That made her cry. Why do people cry when you tell the truth?

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