One of my favorite pieces of writing from the readings was Virga. This piece touched me both with the author’s word choice and writing style as well as her ambiguity of the subject. Deanna's writing choice was very effective perhaps due to its almost poetic rhythm. Her repeating of "I tried to find you," or " I looked for you..." make the piece echo a sense of timelessness as we move from childhood tadpoles to teenage tattoo girls, to self-fulfilling journeys out west. I like how the piece in itself is a journey driven by this search of something or someone. Whether it indeed is a love story, or perhaps just a piece about internal discovery its focus gives the reader something profound to contemplate.

One of my favorite lines is, "But the bleeding didn't stop, so I held my hand above my heart.” Here I can really feel the emotion of the speaker as he/she finds what they have been searching for. As a nonfiction piece the writing is poetic instead of boring, the subject is interesting and profound and very applicable to real life. It isn't just a description but a train ride through someone's life.

The tone of the piece is also interesting, almost lazy and reminiscent. For example, when the author says, “Later in her Mo-Jo-Rising room her father threatened to call the cops,” or “ I saw Red Hat Red Shoes dance to Joe Cocker and Pink Lace Blonde lean into quiet ringless men sipping neat liquors. But you were not there. So I left,” there isn’t much description as to how these incidents made the speaker feel. There isn’t almost any emotion until the speaker discovers what they have been searching for, almost as if they were empty. I enjoy this effect the author has created as it also gives the reader a closer look at the narrator. It also makes the end epiphany more powerful.

Samantha Audet