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Finnish Wedding BlessingEat plenty of oatmeal. / Sauna every season, / Roll in the snow,

39

17k

The Curse of Frankenstein, 1957As they walked along after the matinee, the older brother teased his sister, “Hey, guess what, Frankenstein lives in the attic and he’s goin’ get you.” With a flushed face the little sister responded, "Nah-ah, besides the attic door is locked." And her brother smirked, “Think Frankenstein cares about locked doors?" / Throughout their childhood, the brother jumped out behind closed doors, terrifying his little sister, and with each fright he gave his own fear seemed to lessen. After a startle the sister thought, ‘Does my brother love me, like I love him?’, and she concluded, “He must, why else would he try to scare me to death?’ / Within the decade, a sudden brain hemorrhage took their dearly loved mother. Now, untethered in their mother’s love, the siblings changed, tightened, within, While their father, a traumatized, war veteran, swiftly fell off the wagon, and the brother and sister cast off, rudderless, uprooted into troubled waters.

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6.5k

Vicarious TruthYour life sounds hard, / difficult, sad, / and

29

4.3k

No Way In Or OutThey meet once again, / One teary, one leery, both weary, / Daughter, mother, cut from the same cloth.

15

3.4k

Getting To The Good PartFirst, I spotted the gaggle sagging innocently enough, / One might say blissfully reflected in the laptop screen. / Then out of nowhere came the phrase, "whodunit?”

23

3k

Cat and MouseWhen she was young, / her mother asked, / "Why rush ahead,

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2k

One Woman's TreasureNot sure why yard sales didn’t make the Stress Scale ‘cause the uptick in adrenaline, the ramped-up apprehension of letting stuff go, especially stuff that's been around for a while, the feeling of loss, picturing someone with your old stuffed pony, it’s painful. / This saying goodbye to things brings an emotional dilemma, a mixed-up sense of knowing it's high time for the thing-a-ma-bob with no actual relevance, to be dumped while some queasy feeling of unexpected meaning to the thing erupts. / And an inner kid sputters, "No, please not my wacha-ma-call-it, no, I’m not ready yet.” or your favorite uncle's favorite chipped ashtray along with the obnoxious bric-a-brac, knick-knack, from; who was it again, suddenly becomes the Hope Diamond.

36

1.8k

ApologeticsHe called to straighten her out, / To announce his disappointment. / In no uncertain terms, he rammed it home,

27

1.5k

Too Soon Oldt, Too Late SchmartMy Dad built a whoopee room in the basement of our house, that's what we called it back in the fifties, basically it was a free barroom; he worked tirelessly, tiled the floor, knotty-pined the walls, built a Formica-topped bar, with foot rail, and a pool table center stage. / At one end, he pasted and framed with the utmost care, a life-like mural, a bucolic scene of mountains, pines trees, some guy canoeing across a deep blue lake, right underneath an eight foot, padded bench to sit, toss a beer, gab Red Sox, Pats, Bruins, Celts. / The guy could make anything, fix anything in his neat as a pin workshop, totally in control, competent, a rack of tools, his innate ability to figure out, you name it, he’d fix it, in hands-on kingdom this man did it right, measured twice, cut once.

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1.4k

One More Day at a TimeThe jig is up for us who know each dawn delivers / A renewed sense of dread, despair, disillusionment; another day in, / Day out slog, the persistent, insistent fear of, fill in the blank,

24

1.1k

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