Author Archives: sputterpub

Preschool

Low-carbohydrate baking is our game on many Wednesdays. We try recipes with proxy flours, sweets of quirky name like Stevia and monkfruit. By degrees we’re learning how to bake a better snack, collecting psyllium, adjusting dose. We’re old and young … Continue reading

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Narrativity

We’re visual, devoting near a third of mental processing to what we see, but I submit descriptors are absurd that disregard our kind’s affinity for narrative. We love our stories so, we use them for religion, to explain observed phenomena, … Continue reading

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Appropriate

As inappropriate as PJ pants instead of trousers, rancor, public sex, I just as often well-behave by chance as by my own decision. Mom expects passivity and sweetness. Even Dad advises me to shush and not engage. I listen but … Continue reading

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Oral Surgery

I really should be glad it’s nothing worse. I’m generally healthy – that’s the truth. My aging cross to carry is the curse of chronic gum disease. Today it’s tooth enumerated 4 that I will lose (it’s not my first … Continue reading

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Them/Us

Non-binary, my daughter said to me, reporting on her first-born’s recent speech. They want the neuter plural pronoun – he or she will hurt their feelings. Now I reach for comprehension while I try to frame my sentences so noun … Continue reading

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Super Powers

(To at Least 5 of my 6 Descendants) You’re passionate. I see and honor it. You feel things deeply and coherently. Your fast reactions are appropriate, but not your forcefulness. Apparently we’re fortunate; we’re anything but numb. Though vehemence may … Continue reading

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Alibi

My boyfriend had bad allergies that barred him from enjoying outdoor times, he said. My husband’s hem’rhoids made the biking hard and painful, so he stayed at home instead. My children’s dad was too depressed of course, to take them … Continue reading

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Another from the Old Wives

It’s every mother’s job to feed her young, innate and second only to the birth, to reproduce her heritage among the myriad of beings on the earth. But somehow that imperative to feed grew viral and took over like a … Continue reading

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A Little Self Sketch

Although we’ve been acquainted 50 years as roommates, neighbors, mostly closest friends, she thought my social shyness came from fears – “You follow rules of order,” she’d contend. And he, creative relative, long deemed me typical of where I live. … Continue reading

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Mailboxes

Five units here: two vacant; two in use whose residents have gone away this week. The property is mine – I can cut loose or not. The solitude I daily seek is here without an effort or a plan. I … Continue reading

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