20

there's no grieving in the orange kitchen but you can pull taut the spiral of linking ears across the refrigerator doors and around the corner, balance on the scratch arm of a stuffed chair, and weep. you can weep into glowing reruns with your hands on the television's lit cheeks. you can weep through the fireplace up into the chimney, where another bird has gone, maybe an echo will gulp you back. the power's out so you can weep freely in the dark as long as the sound of it stays inside. you can weep outside into the ripe hide of the wheezing animal as you ask him to take you with him. it's a summer virus and his lungs are wrong.
                          i don't know yet the animal won't die that summer
                                          so i don't know i won't have a chance at horse heaven. i've imagined me running on all my legs, there are so many. i do run, it goes differently than this. in the future, the horse dies a simple death after a long life, the last thing he feels in his body is leaping. horses have no need to be ghosts but they do witness, they see that spot between the barn and trailer where the door creates the smallest room where my first knots were tied. mom's layering in the kitchen. the air is sweet alfalfa. i taste dirt but sour. but this trick of light converts burning into just standing, a body just going, going, going along. i hope the animal remembered me.