Despite my history of garden neglect, each year I delight in the sensation of newly turned soil.

I could talk your ear off about the current state of Mexican-American literature.

Dust remembers what we try to forget, preserves the hidden, and keeps evidence in wait.

I am standing at the ironing board, running a hot iron over a folded and stitched-together strip of quilting cotton to make bias tape.

The first time I watched you kill a fish, you were methodical and emotionless, striking it in one blow.

Four weeks. Four weeks and still the virus. Things that were once normal now seem absurd.

The true cost of dying lies beyond the sick. It buries itself in the people who try to love the sick.

I detected — above the waft of Auntie Anne’s pretzels and the affront of vanilla and eucalyptus from Bath and Body Works — the warm, musky scent of oud.