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No amount of soap and water could clean up this mess.
Even if I were to try, I wasn’t quite sure how I’d go about it, or if the effort was worth the results. Perhaps it’d be better to burn the whole thing to the ground and start from scratch.
I eyed the matches on the stove and looked at what I could no longer justify keeping around.
I wouldn’t miss most of it. Or so I had to hope.
My fingers struck a match and I held the small flame to the ring, amazed as always by how easily it grabbed hold and circled to make a blue-yellow-purple circuit of heat.
The fire leapt and danced and hissed.
I sighed.
It was time to wave good-bye. I needed a fresh beginning.
I set the kettle on to boil, sat back down, and hit “Delete.”
For Linda’s SoCS writing prompt: Clean/Dirty
Na'ama Yehuda 
I had a suspicion it was a writer and her work that she wanted to “burn” but then the way you worded this oh, so skillfully, you pulled me down another possible track. Well done!
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😀 Thank you, my friend! The thought of ACTUALLY burning down such stuff (or, as these days allow, using a good micro shredder to a somewhat similarly satisfying if less dangerous effect …) has ocurred to me on occasion – and the shredder has been busy at times for pen-and-paper-messes … 😉
A nice cuppa is always a necessary accompaniment. For sanity’s sake … 😉
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I do hear you. There is also that option of ‘DELETE’… which I have used on more than one occasion, and usually, immediately regretted. Much better to have a ‘garbage file’, just in case 😉
Absolutely, a nice cuppa must be present!
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Yeah … and then there are all those ‘backups of backups just in case …’ (though they’ve been known to aggravatingly disappear when one hits “delete” by ACCIDENT … and suddenly one realizes the WANTED piece escaped all back up … ;)).
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Yep… exackery. The joys…
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🙂
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This is good! You had me on the edge of my seat.
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🙂 Thank you, Sunny! This being a stream-of-consciousness writing challenge, one never quite knows where it would go even as it is typed … I’m glad this ended up engaging! 🙂 XOXO
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If only we could so easily restore the balance of our lives after a wrong turning taken
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Amen to that! If only!
Most times it involved a lotta mess to clean up, some leftover stains, some possible scars, a few unexpected mementos, and even complete U-Turns that end up taking one back to step 1 only in a shabbier (and hopefully wiser?) condition … 😉
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Oh yes, that shabbier condition. But wiser yes. 🙂
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🙂
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Yes, I often feel the need for that magical curly ‘bring back’ symbol in my life. What is that thing called?
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I think it is called “that magical curly ‘bring back’ symbol” … 🙂 🙂 🙂
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LOL…
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🙂
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Oh we’ve all been there!
Like having to delete your entire blog because a Spam Filter won’t let you contact folk (Looking at you Word Press AND Akismet!) and start a whole new blog.
I consigned my going nowhere stuff to folders just in case I can dredge something out (Good old ‘Copy & Paste’).
Best wishes
Roger
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Yep – I do sorta’ same in the sense that I usually have back ups for things I work on (unless, of course, the elves and fairies and pixies get hold of them and make it so I cannot find them or delete them when I don’t at all intend to and so on, which has happened on occasion and I do not appreciate much … 😉 ).
Oy for the blog deletion!!! That does not sound like fun at all!
Thank you for reading and commenting, Roger!
Na’ama
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My sentiments exactly Na’ama!
I am convinced a clan of pixies migrated into the cyber world where they play all sorts of mischief (like inserting typos after you and others have carried out the zillionth check!).
The blog deletion was a pain, but since I write fantasy there was a kind of apocalyptic symmetry to it all…
And thus do I return (queue: Heroic Music) 😃
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I can hear the music! … 😉
Glad you persisted – it is, really, the only way.
🙂
Na’ama
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I spent 27 years of my 45 year career in the UK Civil Service trying to service the public despite the vagaries, failures and shortfalls placed on me by various computer systems.
Thus I will not be foiled by something as twiddley as WP!
(Strikes heroic pose, raises stage prop sword in defiance…..steps back to avoid being coldclocked by descending stage curtain)
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Say no more.
Working in the civil service is self-explanatory for learning to cope with vagaries, issues, failures, shortfalls, messes, mishaps, delays, demands, and … 😉
(Good thing you’d taken that step back — them curtains come down FAST these days … 😉 )
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😄
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🙂
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