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Just this

The story is here, it starts now. Everything is the story.

Home at the table, with the dark and the light. This is the story. It's night though not as late as it feels. The children, one laughing, one singing, are the story; the shaggy black dog sleeping on the couch his long face partially obscured by the puffy white tale of the cat who sleeps curled against him are the story too.

There are dishes in the sink as always, dinner dishes, white bowls filmed with brown gravy and small blue green plates.

Unfinished projects left scattered on the dining room table; paint and glue, saw dust, a drill, a flat wooden heart riddled with small and bigger holes, an unfinished glass of milk, an unfinished cup of tea, a bottle of honey, salt and pepper shakers, an unfinished cup of coffee and a glass of soda with an orange straw.

A pile of freshly washed and folded blankets drape over the back of the arm chair, a pile of neatly folded jeans and a pile of neatly folded black shirts wait in the arm chair. Another white cat sleeps wedged between the piles of folded laundry in the arm chair.

The singing child has gone to the kitchen in search of food. He's stopped singing. I hear him open the jar of peanut butter, I hear him slice an apple. The laughing child comes to the table to finish her tea and finish her project. She starts to sing.



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