My mouth opened. It happened. Yes, with my head thrown into the sky, I started howling. Arms stretched out next to me, I howled, and everything came out of me. Visions pored up my throat and past voices surrounded me. The sky listened. The city didn't. I didn't care. All I cared about was that I was howling so that I could hear my voice and so I would remember that the boy had intensity and something to offer. I howled, oh, so loud and desperate, telling a world that I was here and I wouldn't lie down.

Believe it or not--it takes a lot of love to hate you like this.

I suppose he'll die soon. I'm expecting it, like you do for a dog that's seventeen. There's no way to know how I'll react. He'll have faced his own placid death and slipped without a sound inside himself. Mostly, I imagine I'll crouch there at the door, fall onto him, and cry hard into the stench of his fur. I'll wait for him to wake up, but he won't. I'll bury him. I'll carry him outside, feeling his warmth turn to cold as the horizon frays and falls down in my backyard. For now, though, he's okay. I can see him breathing. He just smells like he's dead.

Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you've finished just to stay near it.

I watch the beauty for as long as I can, then turn and face the rest of it.

She closes the door completely, and I crouch there. I allow myself to fall forward and rest my head on the door frame. My breath bleeds. My heartbeat drowns my ears.

..As always, she was carrying the washing. Rudy was carrying two buckets of cold water, or as he put it, two buckets of future ice.