The fruit tasted foreign but indigenous, like sunlight a tree had changed through patience.

There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory.

She was one of those Southerners who knew from an early age that the South could never be more for them than a fragrant prison, administered by a collective of loving but treacherous relatives.

One does not know where love will take you.

She had so mastered the strategies of camouflage that her own history had seemed a series of well-placed mirrors that kept her hidden from herself.

Basketball allowed me to revere my father without him knowing what I was up to. I took up basketball as a form of homage and mimicry.

We set down feasts for each other and treated our love with tongues of fire. Our bodies were fields of wonder to us.