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ALLEGORY OF THE WINTER DOE A young man, walking alone at night because his car broke down, came across a doe frozen along the highway. Snow fell lightly on her pelt, her opened eye. Black blood iced a small space in the ditch. He crouched down to touch her neck. He had tasted venison the summer before, at a dinner where the woman he loved kept glancing at the friend who had shot the deer, skinned it, sizzled its meat on his grill. It made him feel sick to eat it and the sickness carried him out of the yard, down the road, along the curve of streetlights glowing over the rough, tangled limbs of pines. As he walked, he thought of the nights he lay awake while she slept. How the moonlight glazed her eyelids blue. How her chest rose so slightly, it seemed she hardly breathed. That must be why I awoke some nights, his hands slipping away from my throat—why I always slept in fits—dreamed of nothing.  ...

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