Lucy. Do you remember when we went on our picnics during those few warm days of the year? We got on my broken bicycle sick with rust, moaning under our weight, and headed down to the field with haystacks, evergreen weeds, and nine horses. They scared you at first. Do you remember?
A herd of horses, four brown and five white, somehow never escaping that rickety little fence – the fence I could easily step over with you on my shoulders. You called me your giant carrying you to faraway lands we dreamed of only minutes from our home.
You grew to love the horses. You said they had a voice few could hear, and their breath felt like a warm blanket even when the stubborn cold had settled in your bones. I would ask you what the voices said, and you’d shake your head. It is a secret, you’d say. You can only learn when they choose to tell you.
The day we received the news, you were drawing up in your room. Wax crayons were your favorite tools. That day, when we cried together, you drew a different kind of horse from the pure beings of light you’d usually create. Its giant head looked down, mane vibrating like a coming storm, shedding violent strokes of black and red.
Winter displayed its most ugly face those following weeks. Every snowflake a ghost. Every crack a wrinkle on aging skin. The only signs of life were eager to get anywhere but our home, racing, leaving murky puddles where they passed. Hurried blurs occasionally came into focus wearing an uncomfortable smile or carrying a casserole.
As I mocked our neighbors’ attempts at empathy and let the casseroles sit by the door, untouched, you retired your black and red crayons and told me nothing should be left to spoil.
The horses have gone, and I never did learn the secret. There is just the stone memory. A monument created by someone who has never been loved by a horse. A frozen mare watching over faded fragments of hundreds of lives.
You used to say that you’d pray for them to have wings. Winged horses that can escape life’s tantrums.
Have you helped them escape, Lucy? Have you taken them with you?