how Ralphie sets it on fire, tries to kill time, how even after it’s dragged away—all limp hooves & singed fur, chained bones beneath a burlap blanket—it snakes its way through the paddock dirt to Tony’s dream where he rides it backwards in his living room, tells Carmela he wants to come home & she says there are some non-negotiables, that the horse must go. When I ask my husband if he thinks time exists off Earth, he says we’d not only have to leave the planet but the universe to escape it & I think of that verb tense in Italian for a hypothetical in the past, the grammar of impossibility, & how, last night, when my cousin came to me—still alive—I tried to tell her I’d heard there was nothing to fear, that she shouldn’t be scared, but my chest was a gallop that swallowed my voice & all I had was breath & all I could do was wake up & live.