Carrion Horse

This horse has been dead nearly six months.
He was shot straight out from under me.
He folded over, went to his knees and I landed in a broken heap on the barren ground.
It took me a month to collect myself and to get back up.
I’m still not fully healed, I walk with a limp.
When the weather is cold, my joints ache.
My heart still leaks rivers of blood.
Once I was on my feet, the first thing I did was resurrect that horse.
He was stubborn, didn’t want to leave the grain in the Elysian Fields behind.
Not that I could blame him.
It took blood and patience and a bargain at the cross roads to do it.
And it wasn’t just Orpheus that couldn’t look back.
But at least Eurydice wanted to go.
I pulled and tugged and dragged that damned beast back up the entire way out.
And then his flesh didn’t want to hold up.
Those that have died can never really come back.
Maybe it was a blessing that Orpheus lost Eurydice at the last minute.
I have to take my bone needle and red thread and patch and repair as we go.
But everyday, I get back up in that worn saddle and onward we go.
Up, up, up – it’s never a downhill run.
We fight for every step, every foot, me and that carrion horse.
The vultures circle above, waiting for us to quit.
But we’ve come too far now.
They thought that by killing my horse, I’d have no other options, that I would be too slow on foot.
They forgot that I am not a normal woman.
They forgot about the black hilted knife at my hip and the bone needle in my collar, the red thread I keep looped around my wrists.
They forgot that l don’t work in just this world and that I’m willing to strive ever toward what I want.
And this horse may be dead, but my will isn’t.
This horse has been dead for nearly six months.
They should have killed me instead.

Lauren Elise
March 25, 2018