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CZ Studio and Radio Verte presents The Wild Wind by Corey Zimmerman.

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Chapter 15

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The Wild Wind

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Born of a union between the goddess Podarhe and Zephyros, the god of the West Wind, Rowan Beauty was immortal, a magnificent racing stallion given by Poseidon to Achilles' paw, Peleus, upon his wedding to the goddess Thetis.

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Rowan Beauty is first mentioned by name in Book 16 of the Iliad. The rapid stallions, Rowan Beauty and Daple, the team that raced the gales, magnificent team.

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The storm-wind filly, light-footed fowl for the West Wind, grazing the lush green grass along the ocean's tides.

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The horse's immature nature makes them difficult to control, and Apollo says to Hector at one point that there is no use running after them, saying,

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Hector, you're chasing the wild wind, fiery Achilles' team. They're hard for mortal men to curb and drive, for all but Achilles.

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Both Rowan Beauty was said to be capable of human emotion and human speech, weeping and mourning Achilles of his impending doom.

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Rowan Beauty was a star. He was an American paint horse, a combination of western stock with a Rowan coat which shimmered with mixed black and white hairs, one white rear foot, and a tail and eyes, as black as midnight.

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He was clever and could open any closed gate. Rowan Beauty was a graceful horse, superior in agility, and he could roll and roll, making him quite the valuable equine.

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Given his speed, I raced him with the horseshoe nail in my pocket, and Paul always said he earned his worth.

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Still, every time I heard a stranger say, what a darling, what a warm blood, a winner, a purse, I clenched my teeth as Paul counted numbers in his head. My white knuckled grip tightened around Rowan's reign.

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I was passed through his collar on my first birthday, and as soon as I could walk, I started riding, and Paul began training me to barrel race at once. I was but four, the year of the St. Louis World's Fair.

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The only time Paul and I bonded was within the corral.

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He drew a starting line in chalk and set up three barrels of water, arranged so one was directly in line with the start, one to the left and one to the right, to form a triangle, a three leaf clover pattern.

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I would bolt from the line directly toward the barrel on my right, making a loop toward the second barrel, changing direction to create a figure eight, towards the third barrel, and one furthest from the start, where I made a loop around the barrel and headed straight back to the beginning, where Paul stood, pocket watch in hand.

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Winning times were under 15 seconds, and it took many summers before Paul felt I was ready for my first competition.

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Barrel racing combines the horse's athletic ability and the horsemanship skills of the rider. Quick and precise barrel racing is not an easy task.

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But Paul taught me if I rode the pattern slower and cleanly, I might actually get a better time than if I just tried to go my fastest, galloping wildly all over, making huge turns with wobbly runs between barrels.

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Control is just as important as speed, Paul said again and again. Keep your heels down, your eyes up, and your hands quiet.

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Yet as I write this, as I continue down this page, my hands are loud, the keys are loud.

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When Paul and I returned home one Sunday, in the summer of 1912, I wore my first place prize around my waist, a leather belt with a nice shiny buckle, and Paul a wad of cash in his trousers.

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I sewed Rowan Beauty down and brushed him thoroughly, and when I took him to the barn, he nuzzled me and gave me a good old sniff, the hairs of his pink nose quivering.

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I looked into his dark eyes full of emotion, into a future so vast one could see the ends of time.

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Yet into a reflection of the moment, as a tear ran down his cheek from the permanently blackened V in the corner of his eye, and I gave him a kiss on the nose.

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Just as midnight, the black cat who lived up in the hayloft rubbed against my leg, I then went inside to show you, Sam, my belt.

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You were the grandfather I never knew.

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You knew me so well, you could see straight through me. I was but a child, chilled by the gust of wild wind.

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Sam, you did what grandfathers do, you warmed my heart by the fire upon your knee.

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The bond between you and I was sewn tightly as ever, as the binding of the books that bound us and our love, although outward and expressive, dove mysteriously between the lines.

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A void filled in a way Mama and Pa never could, both absorbed within their own sadness and exhaustion.

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I often felt a sad, quiet girl sitting on the stairway listening to Pa snoring and Mama's weeping, tears which could be heard rolling down her sunken cheeks.

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Mama had very high cheekbones, as you know, and I worried that one day they may swallow her eyes whole, as her melancholy surmounted my childhood.

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As you closed the book for the night and I hopped off your knee, my prized belt still hung around my waist.

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I turned to give you a big hug goodnight when we each saw on the light of the fire the blood I had left on your knee.

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I felt the wetness between my thighs and I reached back to see blood on my dress.

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Sam, you gave me a look, not one of anger nor of fear,

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but a peculiar one, a look that broke my heart. You knew.

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Though I realized many decades later, certain matters were not spoken of.

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In that brief moment, as we stared into one another's eyes, a connection so thick suddenly felt so thin,

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incredibly impossibly incommunicatable as I had never felt so exposed nor alone.

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The canyon of that sliver of time filled with empty air too thin to hold words.

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Even a word as aloft as cloud would simply sink beyond the horizon.

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I saw your lips move as you told me not to worry, to go wash up, and that you would make me some raspberry tea.

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But it's only now as I type these words that I hear your words aloud.

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About a half hour later, a half hour filled with dread and confusion as I paced about in a circle with my knees drawn between my legs.

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As I knocked at the bedroom door, I opened it to see Nurse Kate, who I had known my whole life.

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I adored her as she explained to me that my bleeding was perfectly natural.

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Yet no one knew, no one knew why it was.

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Even as she felt the warmth in the middle of my palm, surrounded by the colder outer edges of my hand,

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and I'd listen to an explanation of what she referred to as a sacred covenant, one of womanhood.

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When she gave me a supply of rags, instructing me how to use them, and told me a little cinnamon will stop the heavy flow.

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But no, she didn't know. No one knew.

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And once Nurse Kate left, I caught sight of Mama gazing in through the crack of my door with loathing eyes as though she could see.

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And only she could see. My blood had brought her more misery, more tears, and my hope washed away with a sea of sadness,

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as her face had sunk into the darkness that is night.

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Just as I feared her eyes might sink into the back of her skull,

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I held my brush in my hand as I shut the door, isolating me from the world.

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My blood was poison. I dropped the brush to the floor. I stared at the rags, then into the mirror, until I saw a wretched thing.

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I watched myself wither with the cold.

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I changed those bloody rags so obsessively they piled up in the wastebasket high.

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I could not stand the filth, shame. I stopped drinking milk, but it made no difference.

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Only a sharp pain and a tear.

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Curled like a fetus, clenching my knees, I lied upon a pair of scissors.

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I remembered thinking, how absurd. You all think this is a natural experience.

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And I convinced myself womanhood was a curse.

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I started to doubt the bleeding would ever stop.

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I watched the soiled rags pile up, having turned from bright red to rusty brown.

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I thought, if mama's womanhood is so full of loathing, bleeding as her eyes weep, I wept.

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I lay alone, in isolation alone with my thoughts. I began to hate Paul for having no pity on mama, as he knew not the curse.

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Memory then struck me with doom, Rowan Beauty's tearful eyes.

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And with a soft knock upon my door, Sam, you brought me applesauce.

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But too ashamed to look in your eye, I heard your beautiful German accent say my name, Sarah.

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And I opened the door but an inch.

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As I took the bowl from your hand, I felt more human, unlike the ghost I thought I might have become.

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A few moments later you slid a few sheets of paper and a pencil under my door. This annoyed me.

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I wanted to scream I am cursed.

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Instead, I wrote as I squirmed uncomfortably, I am cursed.

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I looked over at the rust in the corner and felt breathlessly buried beneath the wretched stench.

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Buried beneath the shame and secrets.

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I looked down at the purity of those pure white sheets tainted with my fiercely scribbled words.

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I am cursed, but Sam, you gave me a door and it was time I found the courage to walk through it.

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It was time I confess.

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As mama's tears welled up in her eyes in some dark corner, arrows fell.

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From the mystery that is Rowan Beauty, my mind swirled in confusion.

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Yet I knew I no longer was a girl.

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I was a devil, a witch.

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My tears smeared the words I am cursed.

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Blurred but fierce and desperate words.

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Is this what you want, Sam? I asked.

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Is this the revenge for me tarnishing your knee?

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Did I coil around your leg like a snake?

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A wicked voice plagued my mind.

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An emotion I could no longer contain.

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A silence that must be broken.

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I needed an escape.

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Walked through the door, I thought, but my feet were nailed to the floor.

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And I remembered the rat who had ran up my leg.

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I became consumed with desire, feverishly wishing the rat would return.

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Wanting his crooked finger to curse me once more as I had brought home the plague.

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I grabbed the ace of hearts from under my mattress and I tore it in two.

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Never keep anything who who gives you.

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I held onto it for too many days.

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I struck a match and I watched in silence as my heart burnt to white ash upon the floor.

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I broke the pencil in two.

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Still, I felt a hoodoo circling around me.

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I wanted to be burnt alive.

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I searched my bowels for any reason and anyone to hate.

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I wanted to roll up the rug and expose the shards buried beneath.

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I wanted to tarnish those sheets with dirty, rotten, bloody words.

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The confessions of a plagued girl.

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A wretched thing.

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With a broken pencil in her tiny claw, I scribbled as the devil's hand guided my own.

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My sinful heart shall bleed my wicked words upon this blinding purity.

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I wrote feverishly and the words flowed.

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An exorcism I wrote until the lead diminished and I continued on.

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Wood on paper, wood on wood.

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And as the paper tore to shreds, I wrote my message into womanhood with each drop of blood in each cold, crooked finger as I chased the wild wind.

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I felt chilled to the core, but it was of no concern as the fire raged inside me.

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And I whipped that rat's tail round and round as I paraded about the arena of madness.

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I felt what no child should.

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I wrote of loathing and of pathetic tears.

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Of abandonment.

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I wrote of a cold and empty and unadorned palace.

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I wrote of creaking and crackling and falling apart.

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I wrote of a distant, dusty mouth and of dust down the damned road.

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I wrote of the missing Achilles, a hero absent from his own tale.

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I wrote of a world of doom.

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And I smeared the blood across the bottom of the page as I wrote my final words.

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I am nobody.

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I was nobody but a confused and wounded little girl.

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Gobbling down applesauce with a sprinkling of cinnamon.

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I stood from my chair, sliding its legs backward across the floor with a screech.

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I gathered the pile of crusty brown rags smelling of wet pennies and opened my door with its unoiled hinges and went to the barn.

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I wanted to burn them, yet I feared the blood in my veins might run dry and burn up my life.

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Midnight rubbed against my leg.

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The cat's cry in the night.

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Ruin Beauty stood like a monument.

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Perpetual sorrow.

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I rubbed him behind the ear as he blew and whispered in my ear.

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In your knees and in your heart, I give strength.

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I returned to the house.

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I gathered the sheets of tarnished paper upon my desk and wrote down an appropriate title across the top.

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Ruin.

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R-U-I-N.

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Ruin.

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Sam, you were poking at the fire when I approached with a fistful of sheets in my hand.

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And with a stiff arm, I handed them forth.

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And as you grabbed them, you tainted your own.

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If you want the wretched truth, I thought, here it is.

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This is my story of ruin.

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And it is my only tale to tell.

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Ruin.