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31 tRompe L’oeiL Once, while a man sped me down a back road in a gray pickup, I memorized my younger face in the passenger side mirror, burned the opal at my throat and the white secondhand blouse— tiny lilacs, puckered sleeves— into the undersides of my eyelids. My hair streamed the color of hay out the window. Lettering on the mirror told me that despite how close I appeared, I may have been closer. Something lit the opal’s pink fires nearer the surface than I knew. Things were not what they seemed. There was nothing I could reach out and touch.We parked in a cloud of gravel dust. I hurled rocks into the quarry’s dark mouth, bible black, and lied about hearing them hit bottom. Inside every stillness, I believed something moved. This page intentionally left blank. ...

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