Tuesday, November 16, 2010

tag sale

Funny, it never bothered me
before, to sniff the rooms
of the anonymous widow.
Furniture gone, fern-patterned
china stacked on the linoleum,
the cash-cow card table 
in the entry, with plenty 
of zip-locked costume jewelry.
I’d casually grope unknown cupboards,
sunny, like choosing a tomato
at the grocery. But this time, it feels
like I swallowed an umbrella, 
opened, whole, as if I’m in cahoots 
with the devil. The stale ghost
of a dress hangs chiaroscuro
in a shallow closet, faded
scarves raped from bureau
drawers and I realize I’ve left
my sense of humor
in my other purse, knowing
every dog will have its day.




Tess Kincaid
November 14, 2010


I stopped by tag sale in a little neighborhood on the other side of the river this afternoon. Usually, I am excited to see what unique vintage treasures might be waiting. But this time, the experience was less than thrilling.  I left feeling a bit unsettled.

80 comments:

  1. I know this feeling. A few times, I've just turned and walked out, don't know what makes one different than the other but sometimes it just doesn't feel right. I especially feel strange when there are old photos, wedding and baby pictures always choke me up a bit because I feel so sad that there wasn't anyone who wanted them.

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  2. Jeanette, this was just one of those times when it didn't feel at all right. An unsettled feeling of sadness swept over me and it suddenly felt wrong to be picking through her things.

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  3. Oh I too have had this very feeling at some sales...why..I don't know except for maybe what Jeanette has stated..that no one cared
    an opened umbrella swallowed....what an image...what a writer...I bow

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  4. The poem says it all....sometimes it's sad to see someone's possessions lovingly collected over a lifetime going to the highest bidder...as if there was no one who loved and wanted to keep a piece of the deceased.

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  5. Suz, I'll have to admit, I am a bit psychic, and pick up certain energies. This one was saying, "Go away".

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  6. SO creepy, almost. You gave me the chills, Willow.

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  7. I too have shared this feeling. It happened to me at an estate sale. People were going through things, it seemed to me, without any thought of the person who onced owned them. I felt such a sense of sadness.

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  8. Hi Willow, Perhaps her spirit was still there. Hope you've been well. Kim

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  9. It seems to me these sales are always sad.

    Who owned these items? What meaning did they have for that individual? Were they cherished, or curios? What future might they have, and what significance?

    So may questions, with no answers. Like papers — papers with stories — blown away, lost, forgotten, dispensable.

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  10. I love attending estate sales and do so regularly, but I always have an odd vulture-ish feeling as I prowl through someone else's treasures. In fact, I wrote about it recently (http://wwwjanblog-janice.blogspot.com/2010/11/good-bad-and-bargain.html) after finding a glorious pair of tomato salt and pepper shakers at a local sale. I've never gotten a negative feeling as I walked in the door of an estate sale...yet. Maybe next time. I can understand how it could happen.

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  11. Very poignant post, Willow. I have been to two sales that left me unsettled. The first was years ago, an estate sale in a home near my office. I unexpectedly came across a dresser in a small upstairs bedroom, scattered with dozens of family photos, obviously unwanted. Mothers holding babies, young couples standing shyly beside eachother. I was instantly awash with a wave of sadness and left. The other was more recently, when there was an ad for an estate sale in a local paper. I arrived to discover it was being run by the widower and his daughters and the house was full of items I couldn't believe not one of them would want to keep. I was very uncomfortable and waffled between wanting to leave immediately and wanting to buy absolutely everything just to keep it all together.

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  12. I've experienced the same feeling several times. Recently, I attended an estate sale, the lady had passed away, her husband was selling everything, fifty eight years worth of nuturing a marriage, farm life, raising a family. Fifty eight Christmas celebrations, fifty eight Thanksgiving dinners, endless birthday celebrations, all those memories, now nothing more than a dollar store price sticker away from being forgotten.
    I listened to the stories, bought a cookie cutter, and left, with sadness in my heart.

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  13. Yes. Your poem is unsettling as well and leaves me knowing that something is wrong here and haunting.

    I'm always amazed at how you manage to write poem after poem and how wonderful each is --

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  14. My step-grandmother, got rid of all my grandfather's clothes, while he was in the hospital, before he had even died. After the funeral, she rid the house of everything that was his, even his easy chair. Maybe she thought it would be easier not to have his things around, but I still think it was strange to do it so quickly.

    I also think it's incredibly sad to see unwanted family photos, at estate sales or in antique shops. Sometimes, I adopt one or two and take them home with me.

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  15. Hi Willow,

    Do you recall the scene in the film Zorba The Greek when the old lady has died, and is laid out on her bed, and all the village women come and take most everything from the house? Very creepy.

    Marjorie

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  16. Maybe it was just too soon. I've experienced the mad rush to grab; it's unpleasant and unnecessary. At least this wasn't a loved-one's paraphernalia.

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  17. I have never been to an estate sale for this very reason. I have always felt saddened. Now, I love resale shops, so where is the difference? I often look around my house and say, if I were to go to a nursing home, what of ALL this STUFF would I take? Goes to show you how crazy all this purchasing and shopping really is... and I will make sure my husband NEVER reads these words...

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  18. You've described this so well Willow as have the thoughts in the comments.
    "Fern patterned china stacked on the linoleum." is a line that brings a smile of recognition.Old dressers and dresses,plastics, stained glassware and gaping medicine cabinets... years ago, at some deceased estate sales, wandering through rooms, I often wondered sadly how family members could allow their loved ones to live in such a state of disrepair. Now dealing with my parents, I understand how fiercely private some old people can be and how they hate interferene and change in any form.My father would certainly fall into this musty category if not for my mother and myself. Disregarded photos are always sad.

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  19. Sounds as though you've had a strong empathetic reaction, willow. Something similar happened to a friend of our daughter. She went to a sale like this, and began to feel uneasy, as you describe. Suddenly, she was overwhelmed, and had to leave, sobbing. Later, she had no rational explanation for what had happened, only that she may have connected with someone or something, in an unexpected way.

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  20. This is going to sound mean and perhaps a bit childish, but I hope everyone who attended the tag sale for my parents belongings felt this way. I hope they all felt like they had swallowed an opened umbrella! My parents were killed in an automobile accident at 32 and 34 ~ no will. They left behind three children. In the stop of a heartbeat, we became "wards of the court" and the court ordered the sale. Family was allowed to take some things, and my aunt and uncle who "took us in" were allowed to take things they needed, but I can remember as a 7 year old girl it just seemed "wrong" that my parents things were discarded so carelessly and we had no say ~ it had been our home too. Sorry for the long comment, guess your poem touched a nerve. :-)

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  21. :-) I know too this feeling...

    see you and always congratulations for your posts

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  22. What an eerie feeling that must have been...like invading one's private space, I guess. Sort of ominous. I've had these feelings, occasionally, myself.

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  23. The umbrella imagery really speaks to me--I believe I've felt that way before. It's good that you walked away.

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  24. This is the way I always feel when I see such things. Old family photographs especially do this to me.

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  25. A sensitive poem, observant to things unseen but sensed and felt. I do not go to tag sales, but the poem reminds me of a few years ago when my wife and I were apartment shopping in Madrid. Many of the places we saw were being sold by nephews and nieces who had inherited the homes from their recently deceased and childless aunts and uncles. There was something eerie about looking at still full closets and the like. In a couple of instances the disdain the heirs exuded for their departed benefactors seemed so real and negative, ridiculing their taste in furniture and 'tacky' clothes and the like, that it turned us off from what were very nice apartments in all other respects. Whether I believe in such things or not is almost beyond the point; it just makes good sense to avoid 'bad vibes'.

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  26. "I've left my sense of humor in my other purse . . ." Oh, yes. I like this very much.

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  27. Love the poem, it expresses clearly what you felt and it described what you saw as well,very good.

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  28. especially unsettling are estate sales where things like ten shampoos and conditioners are arrayed in the bathroom and you can actually scrounge through the kitchen cupboards.

    I wrote a poem about a similar situation awhile back though dont know where it is now.

    Nice imagery.

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  29. Willow,
    you have so beautifully expressed here what I have also felt at an estate sale years ago in NW Washington. I had tears welling up, I felt as if I were taking part in the rape of a lovingly pulled together home. After that, I have never again looked at estate sales, and the memories of that home in DC still haunt me.

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  30. Sorry, Willow,
    would you be kind enough to delete the double comment? It had looked as if the comment had not been published, so I clicked again.
    Thank you,
    M.

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  31. Marjorie, yes! That scene from Zorba the Greek where the widow has died was pretty much how it was yesterday. People came whooshing in like buzzards.

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  32. Living in Germany, I can't imagine how tragic not only loosing one's parents, but loosing all the household items, would be through the eyes of a seven year old child. Blessings to you. I'm sure this must play a part in what a wonderful parent you are to your beautiful family.

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  33. Yes, Suki, this was just such one of those sale, where the kitchen drawers were pulled open for perusal and the shampoos still in the bathroom.

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  34. oh, willow, first , I don't know if I would be able to go to one of these, and I imagine I would not have lasted more than a minute with such a heavy aura.

    I think this is my favourite of your writings, though.

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  35. Dear Willow, How well your poem captures that sense of unease that one feels on certain occasions when, for whatever reason, one feels that it is wrong to proceed with what one is doing. I noted that your first line mentions the smell of the place...scent has such a powerful effect on our emotions that it is often the trigger, I find, for so many feelings and hidden memories.

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  36. Perhaps there were vestiges of her remaining in the house. Perhaps you felt her presence and that was what was unsettling to you. I know that you have a strong sense of the "other side" Willow, having a ghost of your own at the Manor. It was a nice tribute to her and what remained of her life.

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  37. Oh dear Willow...I too left my sense of humour in my other purse today! Must go and look for it as I can't go through a day without it.
    I love the verse.I know the feeling as I used to be a dealer in vintage, and sometimes the sadness at the contents was overwhelming.

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  38. THis is incredible. That ghost really didn't want anyone rifling through her stuff, eh?

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  39. Hello!
    You have described the emotion of your day so well, I feel as though I made the trip with you. Maybe it's the Season, maybe the unsettled time we live in, maybe the fact that there didn't seem to be family or friends she could have passed her treasures to ... I felt sad reading this.

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  40. What a wonderful poem, Willow! You never cease to amaze and entertain me. Your written imagery is so good, you create feeling and awaken experience at the same time. Having owned and operated a family auction business I, too, have experienced similar feelings. There is much sadness attached to the distribution of someone's life-long treasures. One of my most memorable was when we auctioned off personal belongings (she was still alive) to save a bankruptcy. The woman put a charcoal drawing in for auction. It was soot-covered and a bit ragged about the edges but was so beautifully rendered that it spoke to me. The day of the auction I bid on and paid top dollar for the drawing. The client came to me afterward and told me it was a drawing of her Grandmother that had been rendered by her Grandfather before they were married. They lived in the south where he worked in the coal mines. He died a short time after they married from black lung. (The time was near the turn of the 20th Century). After I told her how drawn I was to the portrait she left the sale site and returned later with a small pen knife shaped like a small Victorian shoe. It was her Grandfather's knife and since I had the portrait she wanted me to have the knife. I had a special matting made to showcase the knife with the portrait (soot included) and it remains with me to this day, one of my most prized possessions. As for your spirit...perhaps she was not ready to let go of her possessions.

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  41. Very interesting. My Mother in law, owned some property, and the tenant had died and I could go there and if there was anything I wanted, I could have. It was most unpleasant, I so felt the presence of the woman.

    And my heart broke to think of her. It is not easy to go through the accumulated life of another.

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  42. I love your poem just for its own self - but then the concept of the house (or her spirit) not wanting you there - poignant.

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  43. Thought provoking! My friend tells a story of going to a tag sale after the death of a woman she barely knew. Somehow, she was able to find a key to a very important safety deposit box that the daughter was looking for. I will have to ask my friend to tell me that story again. It obviously affected her and the woman's family.

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  44. Willow, what a stunning poem.
    You've caught it exactly. I really don't like tag sales and things.
    I've decided that it may be because I'm a little bit intuitive and pick up feelings and so on

    just as you did here......


    please let me know when/if you will be in NY soon.

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  45. Nobody does it better Willow. NOBODY.

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  46. Losing one's home through the eyes of one so young is certainly traumatic. Losing everything as an adult is also traumatic. Knowing that people have rummaged through your belongings and imagining family heirlooms and photographs being shoved to one side pre-auction, is heartbreaking. The feeling of loss although they are material things is indescribable. I know - I've been through it.

    A friend went into what had been my beautiful, joy filled home when the bank opened it for viewing. He told me that as he went in, an elderly Jewish Rabbi was coming out and shaking his head sadly passed the comment 'other peoples' tears'.

    I never go to tag sales.

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  47. Wow, you were sensing something powerful in that place. The imagery here is so vivid. Stunning.

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  48. Only you, Tess, would key into
    the psychic energy within that
    home, those belongings, and
    then create for us an unforgettable
    experience. Stunning wordsmithing
    too, /the stale ghost of a dress
    hangs chiaroscrion a shallow closet,
    faded scarves raped from a bureau/.

    I am surprised no one asked about
    the Italian word, "chiaroscrio", a
    term only few artists and photographers
    use, and so very apt for that moment
    when darkness and light sharpened
    and you felt like just being there
    was some kind of violation. I love the
    sunny supermarket prose that leads'
    us into the emotional zinger.

    You put us in mind of so many other
    experiences many of us have had,
    like the first time I set foot in the
    house I now live in; it just felt right,
    humming with psychic energy and
    portals and good vibes. And of course
    the converse is also true.
    Terrific piece!

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  49. Hey, Glenn, "chiaroscuro" is a leftover word from my college days, when I studied art. Thanks for your generous words. I'm glad you liked the piece.

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  50. While it sounds like a difficult feeling, I glad that you are open to this feeling, the presence of something, someone that touched you - and that you so beautifully share this experience with us.

    Swallowing an umbrella, myself.

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  51. Oh, I recognize this feeling! I sometimes feel this way at our wonderful flea market--when I browse through antique photos from estate sales, I feel like I'm rescuing them from a sad fate. Wonderful poem, Tess!

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  52. My husband just reminded me that almost 21 years ago we purchased our first bed - our marriage bed - from an estate sale. We moved to San Antonio with a U-Haul (of meager possessions, we) and one night our bed just collapsed. Frame broke in the middle of the night and we just laughed and laughed. (that is after I freaked out because I was afraid the cat was for sure crushed to death under the weight) Maybe the previous owners were showing their displeasure, who knows. LOL

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  53. The opened umbrella part surprised me, it was so fresh and feeling, I loved it, and the entire melancholy the poem evokes. Tag sales, Estate sales can do that to a person.

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  54. Some things keep that spirit of 'take me, use me, enjoy me,' and others just don't. For what ever reason... beautifully written, Willow! x

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  55. Oh yes! I have had that feelin...like walking over someone's grave...Your poem portrayed that feeling perfectly.

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  56. ...the ghost of a dress...my sense of humor in another purse....oh my...what writing...leaves me speechless....wonderful. and YES....it reminded me about going trough my mother's things. took me one year after she died to do it...

    i know what you mean about leaving feeling unsettled too...

    cranberry walnut shortbread cookies should help...let me know how you liked them...so simple..so good...

    happy to visit with you today, my friend,
    kary
    xxx

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  57. Perhaps the sale had a component that triggered some past emotion from your mind that sent you home -- not so much that it was folks that were going through materials that once belonged to someone? -- barbara

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  58. Willow,
    Funny that; maybe there were unfriendly spirits there abouts.
    rel

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  59. I'm a big tag sale/estate sale fan myself but I hear you about being unsettled sometimes. I wonder if it's a smell or a familiar piece of furniture that triggers it.

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  60. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  61. For me it's the feeling that someday it could be MY belongings that strangers are picking over...

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  62. Vicki, I think that was a lot of what I was feeling yesterday, as well.

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  63. I know what you mean. It's the uninvited sharing of a life.

    Great image of the leaves in your previous post.

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  64. Who would be a fly on the wall when you were at that tag sale? Just to know what made you write this:

    'I realize I’ve left
    my sense of humor
    in my other purse'

    It's sad. But beautiful. Thanks for your birthday wishes. Very welcome.


    Greetings from London.

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  65. This is one of the reasons I love tag sales...the history of the people that wore or used the items yet...their circumstances are oftentimes so very sad or lonely. Excellent piece.

    I LOVE the word chiaroscuro. LOVE IT. Perfect word picture.

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  66. I've gotten those bad vibes before too. Very unsettling...

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  67. Can you find the Hamlet reference in this poem?

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  68. I've felt just the same way in sales. You depict the sudden apprehension of the previous life that inhabited the place and now haunts the artifacts so well.

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  69. Marcheline, it's the last line, of course. I'm a huge fan of Hamlet. I'm glad you noticed!

    The exact quote is this, when Hamlet says, "The cat will mew and every dog will have his day."

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  70. An auction room offers several degrees of separation but a sale in someone's home must feel strange, especially where personal items are concerned rather than, say, furniture. A telling poem, Willow.

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  71. Willow, ah yes....I have felt this way at certain sales - who can explain why - except we must trust those "psychic" feelings....and leave. You did the right thing - but the poem is lovely....and, I did catch the "Hamlet" reference!

    Hugs,

    ♥ Robin ♥

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  72. That is really lovely. I think where you chose to end each line really added to the 'unsettled' feeling. Bravo.

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  73. I think that whatever the feeling that was hovering..it helped to produce this poem..grateful for that!!

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  74. yes, reminds me of the auction of the old widowers belongings at the end of my drive the other day. He had just recently died. I couldn't bear to go to look through his things. I usually love auctions and vintage sales too...
    I have enjoyed your blog recently, and found you via your Magpie Tales...

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  75. Willow, I wanted to see the picture that is showing up as your avatar on your comments, but when I click it, the link takes me to your profile, and the photo showing on your profile is some chick with a blindfold on.... not the same picture that's your avatar here.

    What gives?

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  76. Sorry about that. Changed it. Again. :^)

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  77. Aw, I so get this. No doubt you're sensing unfinished business in that home?

    Nevertheless, beautifully expressed, I admire your self-awareness and the postitive thing you did with it.

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  78. Yes, i did get what you were referring to here. nicely put indeed. If it didn't seem right, then best to have left! you have enough ghosts as it is! :)

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  79. This one. This one I absolutely love.

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  80. Willow, reading your poem made me feel very uncomfortable. You have captured a feeling I have experienced before.

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Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.
― O. Henry (and me)