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Words won't come.
Had little to say today,
yesterday, last month.

Do muses take vacations?
If so, I hope she's in Malta or
Montana or Pittsburgh - places

on the bucket list that grows
shorter. Why couldn't I write about the
Asian woman in purple rubber boots

at the Chelsea station, loudly asking
the guy with earbuds for directions or the
red fox in my dreams that lives in the

fields that flank my friend's farmhouse
or the wounds that never healed from the day
in fifth grade when I went to school covered in welts?

        Amy Barone