I Am Already Haunted:

His fortune cookie pissed him off. What happened? he asked. Did they run out of proverbs? What's a proverb?

I laughed and held a mini teacup in my fingertips. Guessing, I said, a proverb is a little saying that's tinged with wisdom…or something.

Oh. Well, they ran out, he said.

Hmmm

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I thought endlessly about yesterday's words: hurts -- like yours and mine -- we can’t wish away. I have ruined your smile and poked accidental holes in your happiness.

I looked at the worried shadows around his eyes. Do you want to take the motorcycle or the truck? he asked.

I think I just heard them say frost on the news. Let's drive, I answered.

We stopped at an empty farmhouse in Oxford and looked at its fieldstone foundation and old stone walls, then glanced at the lot's edges where lawns littered with swing sets and high priced homes encroached.

I would gladly sharpen a knife and pare away slivers of my soul to make such vinyl-sided ugliness sink into the earth.

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A speck of a moon skipped through trees where I ran under falling leaves with Lily.

Halloween is coming, but I am already haunted.