I found my naked-headless Barbie — the one I keep near my printer/copier/fax machine — laying flat when I finished a 20-minute phone conversation with my mom about my relationship crap.

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The park is a place where everything is correct, everything is in order, everything is as it should be. A tree is a tree, and there is nothing wrong with the earth, the sky, a birdsong, the effortless melody of it all.

***

Words like hors d’oeuvres sandwiched between perfect blue lines and served in a spiral-bound notebook.