quote:

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What happens to dreams when they die? Is there a mausoleum tucked away deep inside one's mind where dreams lie down on stony biers and cross their arms across their breasts to sleep a final sleep? These thoughts haunted me as I rode cross country in the chartered Greyhound bus to boot camp.
At least one dream I had when I was a kid didn't inter itself peacefully to rot away in the dark recesses of my mind. It was cremated the summer I turned thirteen. The year we nuked Phoenix.
Dad pulled me out of school a few days before summer vacation started that year. He took me out to the Chieftain dual seat crop duster and started getting it ready to take up. “Donnie you've shot up like a weed this last year.” He looked mighty proud of me.

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"Is there a mausoleum tucked away deep inside ones mind where dreams lie down on stony biers and cross their arms across their breasts and sleep a final sleep?" --> "ones" should be "one's" and I think it would flow better as "...and cross their arms across their breasts TO sleep a final sleep?" so as to avoid "and... and... and...".

Finally, the second paragraph is a retelling of a more distant past, but presented in the same tense as the first paragraph. It's entirely possible that I'm wrong about this, but it struck me that it ought to have been: "Dad had pulled me out of school a few days before summer vacation started that year. He'd taken me out to the Chieftain dual-seat...". But like I said, I could be wrong.

I'd like to see you start with the nuking of Phoenix and then run with it from there.