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I had pasted a pink Post-it to my phone screen that said DON’T DRINK.

The everlasting shines through in the threshold between worlds.

“There’s life after birth! That’s what jails and lethal injections are for!”

There are certain defects which well mounted glitter like virtue itself.

When you turn fifty, you have to prove to yourself you’ve got something left.

A letter is like a poem, showing the marks of an unwilling composer.

You’re feminist? Neither one of you. You just like getting into fights.

Praise the ease of it: how simple it is to tell the dog he loves her.

Only one constant existed: I wrote. Writing was my center of gravity.

Mentors can suggest to you what more you are capable of.

The blackness of her hair seemed to pull the color from her body.

That Hawaiian shirt is the first thing Ratso’s owned that he hasn’t stolen.

Stable-keeper’s kids know broken then healed, but healed with limits.

Third Place

Oh, how fascinating it was, watching it all! It was exactly like a play.

Dad doesn’t believe I’m beauty queen material. I believe in myself.

I am going to relate to you the most lamentable love affair of my life.

He is not in the position to lose a friend. Not when one is all he has.

Her body had become a scale, a device for measuring grief.

She wags her index finger so furiously that I’m certain it will snap off.

The dead men don’t look like themselves or anybody else.

It’s a girls’ college we’re going to, but all the guys know Polly’s name.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

I wanted to be a citizen of the empire called American Express.

Susan Ann so wants to be that girl—daring, free, divinely sensual.

It’s been a rainy, relatively windless fall, the aspen leaves clinging.

The phone rang at an awkward hour, too late at night to be good news.

I promised to return, but secretly I dreamed of staying in America.

She knew Jim would be a terrible husband. They’d murder each other.

He betook himself to the metropolis to become a literary man, of course.