I Lost My Horse by Cecily Parks

I Lost My Horse

I was looking for an animal, calf or lamb,

in the wire, metal and hair along the fence line.

Wire, metal and hair and there, in the gully, a man

 

I was pretending was dead. I pretended

to leave him where the woods met the meadow,

walking fast because I’d left my horse lashed

 

to a fence I lost track of two valleys

ago. Like a horse, I shied from the dead.

Here, calf. Here, lamb. I listened, wanting

 

(without my horse, my calf or lamb) to be

whipsmart rather than wanted. I wore orange

on antelope season’s first afternoon 

 

and waited for the click that means the safety is

off. When I spoke, my story was about picking

skulls clean. I wanted everything to be

 

afraid of me, the horseless girl who wanted

to kill a dead man again. The white bed

with a window behind its headboard became

 

ice on the meadow road and a tree to stop

a truck dead. I meant to trace my boot steps

back to the fence where things went wrong,

 

find my horse mouthing the bit, tied up by her

reins. I looked for the horse because she looked

safe enough to love. I looked for the calf

 

or lamb because there was no calf or lamb.

The man left before I could leave him, and I pretended

the world was afraid of me because I was alone.