author's note: the lack of capitalization is for effect. this is written in first person.
they drop him in the ground like so much dirt and he looks like he was frozen into this forever broken, this stiff-jacketed--
"that's not--"
i try, but the world keeps going like it has never halted.
(but it had, with the crunching splash and tanned snowflakes in the river, it had, and--)
"it's--"
it is, but the world doesn't stop for that either because no one here has ever lost a--a boy like that. a--
"phineas--"
i say, when everyone else says "amen." no-one hears me because the wind carries it away.
"phineas."
it is a cold and windy and final day.