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Title of Brevitymag: "Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction | Brevity: The journal devoted exclusively to the concise literary nonfiction."

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The Tide
I am on a precious 15-minute break from teaching a summer writing course to incoming college freshmen. The students have mostly dispersed from the basement classroom I’ve been assigned, quick to escape to the stairwell to huddle in small groups and giggle and flirt with each other, to zone out while scrolling on their phones or take a little walk. I sit at my desk at the front o...

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My name is Dixin. Pronounced disin, the way my mother whispered it when she was tired, the way my grandmother said it when she wanted me to eat more, the way I heard it inside my own head when I still believed I belonged somewhere with certainty...

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Kneading
The first time two nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit place her nearly weightless body inside the shirt they’ve instructed me to unbutton so I can hold her skin to skin, she sticks to me like a hand kneading dough that begs for flour. I sit in a rocking chair but brace against movement, against breathing, although the nurses claim my breath and my heartbeat have the powe...

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Zero
Today I am thinking that to be fat is to retain a vexing relationship with the number zero. This thought arrives with an egg in my hand. I am preparing an omelette and contemplating the mathematical representation of nothing, which at certain angles resembles the contour of the egg I am about to crack. There isn’t much a fat guy can do to flatter his figure. It’s more a case of ...

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The radiation oncologist holds up a piece of paper that looks like something used for target practice. Black outline of a human figure, faceless, gender neutral. You and your father watch as she points to a clump of black squiggles drawn across the figure’s pelvis. “This is the area we treated last time.” She points to a larger clump above, on the figure’s abdomen. “This is wher...

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