Nonfiction

Blue glint on the train track’s steel rail, half-demolished building, sunset over an alfalfa field. Every single thing a brilliance. The skin of the world I am hungry for . . .

Tom Petty dies of a heart attack on the day of my breast biopsy. I picture him, this rock star I loved, looking down at his chest, clutching it with his hand, and then collapsing, lying down for the last time. If I live as long as Tom Petty, I only have ten more years . . .

Like most Nevadans, I’m from somewhere else. And like many of us, that somewhere is California . . .

I don’t believe in god, but I like asking him for favors . . .

My friend Rafael says that the thing about dying in New York is, it doesn’t last very long. I tell him I’m not sure I know what he means by this, and I’m not sure he knows, either . . .

A huge wall of windows looked out onto the thirteen planes, and scooting baggage cars, and the sideways rain. It’s not the way I remembered Dublin . . .

For a moment, you are in absolute bliss. You are a link on the chain of the eternal . . .

I always want to write about my mother’s hands. Her veins bulge, green and purple beneath her skin, and sometimes when she’s tired they travel up her wrists like garden snakes . . .

Smell of sweet olive. Picking satsumas, kumquats, lemons, whatever overhung the sidewalk. Japanese plums from the tree in front of the house . . .