If Eloise was tired, she didn’t know it. She sailed through college like a skiff on the Seine. She did a semester in Vienna, joined a sorority, kept long cigarettes in a golden snap-shut case in her purse, but only smoked them socially.

The night of grandpa’s funeral we all went out and sat on the stump where his oak tree used to be and considered the obvious: that if the tree was still there, grandpa would be too.

Mari’s aunt has moon eyes and hair so shiny it reflects the colors of the pinatas hanging from the ceiling. She says hola, sobrina to Mari from behind the register and when she smiles her crooked teeth make her seem more beautiful instead of less.

Sometimes I pick up a piece of trash off the street and feel things I wish I didn’t — a crumpled can of Coke elicits a shock of sexual energy, a wilted balloon tied to a tree draws out a feeling of disappointment so profound I have to sit down on the curb to rest.

When someone tells you you are beautiful tell them hell-yes and if no one tells you you are beautiful, fuck them all but still keep dancing. You have a right to be here.

The wind blows through the pear trees at the top of the hill, a stream of white petals spinning through the air and past us, catching in our hair. One lands on my lip and I pull it into my mouth with my tongue, holding it there like communion.

By this time we have already circled back past the shack, briars exploding in a crown at the point of the gabled roof.

I suppose I always knew mama was different, born in New York City, loud and full-hipped, with thick dark eyebrows that pushed down against her even darker eyes when she was angry, which was often.

This cafe was a gourmet grocery where I stocked shelves, reading from labels the names of European cities I swore I would visit, but never did.

I find a tin of candies melted into their wrappers, a tiny book of love poems by a very sad poet, the crumbling skeletons of a palmetto bug, a pair of withered camel crickets, and the perfectly preserved shell of a cicada, copper eyes bulging.

So, I ask myself: What will it be — a soundless existence steeped in the solace of language and letters, or a raucous existence marked by danger and dereliction, dragging my books along with me in a dirty satchel laden with dreams and lembas bread?

Rosetta was thinking about how free it looked up there on the moon, so clean and airy, a place where even your own story couldn't weigh you down. 

She called the weather man by his first name, “Greg,” and said it so lovingly, it’s like she had another son, but a wise, all-knowing one who could deliver us from whatever hell or highwater was coming.

It was greenest of times —green rooms, green walks through green trees, entire green days spread out before us.

But in the end, I always came back to Durham, a city that fit me like an old leather jacket, edgy enough that I didn’t feel embarrassed to call it my own, but small enough that I felt safe there, even with my father breathing down my neck about getting a real education.