Brittle red and green striped Christmas ribbon candy _____
-- arranged in neat nestled waves in a white box --
arrived regularly from Uncle Jerry every December.
One piece after dinner was hardly adequate. _____

The afternoon that I held the box in my lap, trying to determine
how much I could eat without the inroads being apparent,
my dog put his head _____in my lap
and licked its stiff rippled surface.
I closed the cover,
and returned the box to the coffee table
where it usually lay.

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