Response:

A horse can spook easily-- all it can take is a strange rustling of leaves or the quick movement of a deer between trees or something as simple as a pile of rocks in a place where perhaps they shouldn't be. His horse, coming upon the burned-out remains of a campfire, bolted. One, two, three beats later, the horse bucked and he landed back first against a tree. She remembers the blood that dripped down his neck, how her fingertips were bright with it, how he leaned against her until he caught his breath. She knew he would be fine. And she also knew to be afraid, because love that comes from a place like that is dangerous.

They are in bed now, and she watches him sleep through all of his secrets. She has her own, of course, but they are neatly tucked away, hidden in her closet, obscured by the confusion of the everyday. The circles under his eyes and way he flinches, it seems, when she comes into a room and the warm, wet smell he carries back into bed after he showers in the middle of the night for no reason, no reason she can discern, these things give him away. When he wakes up, she will ask if he remembers that day, if he remembers how when they finally got to their car hours later, aching and sore, she climbed into his lap. She wonders if he remembers that she was careful to hold the back of his head, and that kissing felt different, everything felt different, more immediate, more important. Maybe he will smile in recognition. They will remember, together, how beautiful the delicateness of the human body is: how a broken bone can pierce through the skin, how a bruise can spread across a thigh like an ink spill, how all that seems infallible is nothing really but flesh upon flesh.