I did wonder what happened when we died, though, and I'd wondered about it for most of my life. Thinking that nothing happened, that there was absolutely nothing following all of this pain, seemed just as silly as magic. No, there had to be something.

The conversations of men had always been muddy rivers, the surface's roiling a reflection of what's buried, but the bottom some mysterious thing that would always be hidden.

Most of us knew things that we didn't even want to confess to ourselves, so we took those secrets with us like condoms, stuffed in wallets, that would never be used.