horsegirl’s lament Were you so fixated on the shimmering coat you ignored the animal underneath? That incomprehensible mare, abandoned riding atop and within a pile of used clothes? Ruminate on fond surprise: thunderstorms, unseen motorcycles, dumpsters returning. Stacked-up wet pillows, hickory welts, all sudden energies imagined or real. Use your hooves now. Stop nailing shoe after shoe until your legs split. It’s okay to stop. It’s okay to kick anyone fool enough to lurk behind you. Remove your hands from the bingo cage. You will never withdraw a number that blacks everyone out. Excuse every finger you laid on the TV screen shining a wreath on the obverse. Excuse every gate you flung yourself over, every sentence bridled in midair hitherto unresumed. It drove you feral for five summers. Forgive the resultant self-domestication. Forgive ten wintry deaths growing fat on nights tentative sleeping standing up. Hide apples under your tongue again; vocalize desperation through a sprig of mint. A tree lounges, shattered, gasping for water. (Seriously, drink water.) How many manes will coalesce to erect and reunite a split trunk? Will they instead work it into a horselike model obscuring deep need? When they first cut you out you clung to every necessary justification. All your self-explanatory equine habits daily breaking apart a cracked saddle. Wake up, frolic, eat anything, become the carrot that beats the stick and hop the fence before you dissolve into glue.