This was great … except for the sword sticking out of his belly button.

And so he breathed his apologetic last. Which meant he wouldn’t be back on the show next week. Or ever. Because he was dead. Gone. Never to be part of things: our sandwiches and soup would go on without him. I was making all these connections.

When I sobbed and wailed, I wasn’t mourning Will Scarlet. He’d barely registered as a character. He was just part of things.

My parents said not to worry: yes, everybody died, but then went on to heaven, which would be wonderful. I wasn’t looking for something better. I just wanted more sandwiches. I didn’t want the people I ate those sandwiches with to vanish from the world.

The crying only stopped as I slipped into brooding, which took on its own gravity, and compacted down to a dark and heavy mass, a little black hole that I nursed in my five-year-old heart and never got around to discarding.

But I carry it differently now. Every night I sleep at my old wooden house on the western plains, I get up two or three times to look up at the great wheel of stars. Some people talk about feeling insignificant when contemplating the universe. I do not. I imagine my dust lighting up the dust lights up between the diamonds. I imagine all the breathing I’ve done, making a home in various clouds.

I could rain on you. You’ll know me by the taste of ham and cheese.