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by Ernest Bruns

“Have you ever noticed the similarity between absence and abscess?” she asked me years ago after her father died. Today I think I understand what she meant, but her absence seems more like an unrelenting cancer than an abscess. I look at the sunset and wish I could reach across the Void to ease the ache. Turning to my oldest daughter, I repeat her mother’s words. “Christ, Dad,” she exclaims as if I have affronted her newfound adulthood. “Do you always have to be so fucking weird?”

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Ernest Bruns is an instructional designer and technical writer in Austin, Texas. He is trying to follow his horoscope’s admonishment to practice living in both worlds today.