I look at the faces around me, at my dad, chin in hands, elbows propped on the boat’s edge, and decide that, in each of its various forms, this country infects those who wander here. It burrows itself into imaginations, it breeds in the heart, the blood. It grows on you and in you, until, eventually, it becomes you.

Cezanne's Carrot

The winter loomed dark. Snowflakes made the house, lit up like a face at Christmas, shrink beneath their fury. My brother and I, along with whatever friends energetic enough to walk the two miles back, tromped up the steps in our heavy boots hours after sunset. We'd walk through that door, tracking in the heart of the storm, to the scent of my mother's bean soup.

Retrozine - January 2003