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white flowers attached to dark green leaves growing into orange dots. Rows of oval trees screened the views from neighbors and our lives were never seen.

Jesse probably liked the looks of things. When my mom opened the front door to [[strikethrough]] the [[/strikethrough]] our halfway house he could see the living room decorated in matching white. The carpet rolled into the white sofa, over the white chairs and stopped at the white walls. Glass windows took over at the edge where the carpet stopped, large, reflecting. The glass framed the swimming pool buried in the back yard. A long hall was the trail from one room to another. The house was a rectangle stretched out like a strip mall. Arizona style.
Jesse was a pound dog cowboy and he had just been adopted. He didn't come with papers and his genealogical tree was twisted and had been chopped down. Jesse was born in a trailer with a sink full of dirty dishes. The mixed breed cowboy wore wrangler jeans curved across his hipbones dipping under his stomach. His belt hinged both sides of his pants with an open zipper curving to the doubled stitched seam lost between his legs. ...My eyes followed that metal [[strikethrough]] fitted [[/strikethrough]] bloodline up over his chest to the holes in his nose that flexed with each rattled cigarette breath. His light forehead curved and moved gradually into brown tie-dyed skin. Thin tufts of hair pushed back away from his protruding cheeks sinking into his cracked mouth. He held a cigarette in ocher stained fingers tips. This cowboy rolled his own brand without the surgeon generals

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