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Lights Along the Path
I sit on my front porch step, the brick still warm even though the sun is long gone. Oklahoma nights are neither cool nor quiet. I listen to the soundtrack of summer: cicadas (locusts) perform loud enough to drown out my reverie and then recede into the background. I am 16-years-old. I feel nostalgic and romantic as I watch the moonlight filter through the branches of the oak tree. My future husband is somewhere under this moon, I think. I picture my future: engaged, married, my first baby. My daydreams get me no further than being married with a couple of little kids. In my actual life, once I had…
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First Responders: Lifelong Friends
My friend and I are 7 years old. We are at my house and we’re trying to make sense of a terrible fact. Her little brother rides his bike out of the driveway. He is hit by a garbage truck. One moment he is here. The next he is gone. Her house is full of family but is strangely empty too. We never figure it out, but we try, together. Through the years we write letters. Our families have been close since she moved to Oklahoma at age 5. Through moves and adolescence, our friendship ebbs and flows. It’s always there. My other friend and I are 10 years old.…
