We don't have time to be sad

It was the stop that happened when you made up your mind to confess, but your mouth betrayed you in the end.

I'm pleased to see that the cab is cluttered with cough drop wrappers and empty milk bottles and bits of mud-smeared newspapers made brittle by age. Neatness makes me feel like I have to be on my best behavior. Clutter is my natural habitat.

With his back to us, Sean tugs the halter from the mare's head. She kicks out, but he steps out of the way as if it were nothing at all. With a shake of her mane, she leaps mightily into the water. For a moment she struggles over the waves, and then she is swimming. Just a wild black horse in a deep blue sea full of the ashes of other dead boys.

I could just barely see the dark curve of his shoulder, and something about the shape it made, the gesture it suggested, filled me with a sort of fierce, awful affection.

holding tight, denying the fact that eventually we all had to let go.

This is what you get, Maura, for using your DNA to make a baby.