On Christmas Eve, I stand at the sink, pry open baseball navels, the perfect world of orange: heady zest to the nose, the bitter pith, my thumbs’ push, push to separate flesh from thick rind, not unlike pushing from the old year to the new, birthing the long hidden into daylight.
It’s hard to believe the whole of the world isn’t simply the sum of all the little worlds that look exactly like your own.
Though our house had no special distinction, she had chosen our porch for the delivery, heaving across the dusty tiles, trusting us.
I’m into porn. Cookbook porn. It’s a terrible habit.
The origin of my writing desire is obscure. There was no childhood epiphany, no early need to express myself through the written word, no family influence to credit or blame. The writing bug didn’t so much bite as burrow, so that by the time I finished graduate school it had tunneled into my mind.
How exactly has it come to pass that Memphis, more than any of the places I have lived, speaks to me the loudest? Why exactly has Memphis gotten in my blood?
