Foster

Many's the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.

You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says. ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.

Where there’s a secret,’ she says, ‘there’s shame – and shame is something we can do without.

Neither one of us talks, the way people sometimes don’t when they are happy – but as soon as I have this thought, I realise its opposite is also true.

— Everything changes into something else, turns into some version of what it was before.

She wants to find the good in others, and sometimes her way of finding that is to trust them, hoping she’ll not be disappointed, but she sometimes is.

Eventualities. A good woman can look far down the line and smell what is coming before a man even gets a sniff of it.

Maybe the way back will somehow make sense of the coming.

This water is cool and clean as anything I have ever tasted; it tastes of my father leaving, of him never having been there, of having nothing after he was gone.

Her hands are like my mother's hands but there is something else in them too, something I have never felt before and have no name for. I feel at such a loss for words but this is a new place, and new words are needed.

It’s a hard feeling but as we walk along I begin to settle and let the difference between my life at home and the one I have here be.

Kinsella takes my hand in his. As soon as he takes it, I realise my father has never once held my hand, and some part of me wants Kinsella to let me go so I won’t have to feel this.

At first, I struggled with some of the bigger words, but Kinsella kept his fingernail under each, patiently, until I guessed it or half-guessed it and then I did this by myself until I no longer needed to guess, and read on. It was like learning to ride the bike; I felt myself taking off, the freedom of going places I couldn’t have gone before, and it was easy.

- 'Ah, the women are nearly always right, all the same,' he says. 'Do you know what the women have a gift for?' - 'What?' - 'Eventualities. A good woman can look far down the line and smell what's coming before a man even gets a sniff of it.

My heart does not so much feel that it is in my chest as in my hands, and that I am carrying it along swiftly, as though I have become the messenger for what is going on inside of me.

You don’t ever have to say anything,” he says. “Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.

See, there’s three lights now where there was only two before.’ I look out across the sea. There, the two lights are blinking as before, but with another, steady light, shining in between. ‘Can you see it?’ he says. ‘I can,’ I say. ‘It’s there.’ And that is when he puts his arms around me and gathers me into them as though I were his own.

Everything changes into something else, turns into some version of what it was before.

And that is when he puts his arms around me and gathers me into them as though I were his own.

She says what she has to say, and no more. May there be many like her,

I feel at such a loss for words but this is a new place, and new words are needed.

I have learned enough, grown enough, to know that what happened is not something I need ever mention.

She puts her arm around me. ‘You’re just too young to understand.’ As soon as she says this, I realise she is just like everyone else, and wish I was back at home so that all the things I do not understand could be the same as they always are.

And so the days pass. I keep waiting for something to happen, for the ease I feel to end, but each day follows on much like the one before.

Daddy,” I warn him, I call him. “Daddy.

The sun, at a slant now, throws a rippled version of how we look back at us. For a moment, I am afraid. I wait until I see myself not as I was when I arrived, looking like a gypsy child, but as I am now, clean, in different clothes, with the woman behind me. I dip the ladle and bring it to my lips. This water is cool and clean as anything I have ever tasted: it tastes of my father leaving, of him never having been there, of having nothing after he was gone.

It was like learning to ride the bike; I felt myself taking off, the freedom of going places I couldn’t have gone before, and it was easy.

Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.

Plants whose names my mother somehow found the time to teach me.