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49 A Brief History of Neon First off your bloodstream: 1992, turquoise minnows swimming cross-eyed, hypodermic salamanders marooned on the hourglass beach. Then ’91, her parents’ guesthouse, your activated glow stick pressed recklessly into her heat lamp, sending orange butterfly silhouettes fluttering across the ceiling. Then ’93, a machine gun of red and blue on the cop car’s roof spraying incandescence across your abdomen, the cop saying your eyes are a color that doesn’t exist in nature. And to think it all started in ’88 with a glassblower who forgot the lit candle smoldering in her teeth: the flicker trapped inside a sealed transparent tube, an elongated firefly, a match in a constant state of strike. ...

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