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“As we wind through the graves, I’m reminded of growing up down the road from the town dump to the north and the cemetery to the south, my own house haunting the center, equal radius to either destination: dumping ground or burial. Mama’s ghost skirted the edges; I could feel her presence, but not nearly enough. Girlhood nights I used to sleepwalk, and Alba would find me, wriggling through the slats in the fence, kneeling at the makeshift altar I’d made of debris, all that wreckage, a shrine for the mama I never knew, and my staunch and sturdy saint of a sister would walk me home where I’d claim no memory in the morning. Dreamworld would merge with waking, and I felt it—embryonic, swelling, lucent, what would sprout inside me as I grew older, rasher—the city of the Dead. Where I accidentally sent Karma a few short years later. Where—I can’t shake the clawing feeling now—I’ve sent Cecilia as well, with my vitriol, with my jealousy.” — Jennifer Givhan