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On a winter corner, coming dark of the afternoon, headlights on but lighting nothing but themselves, cars, bus sagging by, two men stood in a hollow out of the wind. One, a poet, his shoes looked too big, laces cinched like fingers hiding a coin. "Women," he said. The other, also a poet, lame, said, "It's because we need so much from them." Somewhere, a bird tumbled down over its tired wings and bounced on the ice, blood to run its migration in the spring, to calcify and then shine, a pearl in a coy winking oyster.

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