So we’re coming home from the grocery store, turn the corner onto French Road and almost hit a horse. Just wandering down the road as if a lone horse out for an evening stroll was perfectly normal.

I have no idea who it belongs to. Tried to call Mike and Zoe — they used to have a horse, but I haven’t seen it in ages. I was going to leave it be, but then I started thinking… what if the rider is laying in a ditch somewhere. Worse yet, what if he’s laying in the woods with the fox, coyotes and bears we have around here.

So I called the Henniker Police Department. Do you know how stupid it feels to tell some cop there’s a horse roaming around the neighborhood? So much so that I felt it necessary to start the conversation with “please don’t laugh, but…”. I think she may have thought I was a little crazy.

There’s something like a line of gold thread running through a man’s words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself.

— John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994

I miss you.