Horses, or To Love a Woman
I was never drawn
to horses the way
the other girls
were. My desires
never took the form
of a deep plunge into
soft brown from
the head – or even
the elongated middle –
no different to me
than the stomach
of a pig or a dog.
I used to pull at the
pants of a boy I liked
in grade school.
He yelled stop
with such desperation,
it made me feel
predatory in instinct,
not prey – the fallback
position for girls –
more schoolboy
than shrinking violet,
more stallion from
a book I had read
than the ones I sat
on at the local farm,
their oblong heads
hanging over the rim
of fences to eat apples
and then perhaps a carrot.
When I was eighteen
I fell in love with a girl.
She just sprouted,
one day, like a flower
in front of me, emerging
from mousy bud
into ripened rose flesh
petals. I wanted to give
her my hands, soft
touches the way a flower
might bloom: a slow
spreading out, then
bursting forth. I wanted
to give her this because
she was so beautiful,
and, yet, that was why
I was told I couldn't.
I never spoke words
to her again, stepping
over the forlorn glances
across a sidewalk
like trampled florets.
If you want to talk
about horses, then
I'd say I have straddled
two separate kinds, two
distinct forms of desire,
neither of which were
considered acceptable.
What I mean to say is,
the horses were never
symbols of sexual desire
to me, not until I grew
up and saw the chains
around their necks.
Originally published in Stone Highway Review, Spring 2012