Wild Horses, by Sky Felix (circa 2004), reposted for my brothers, who don't read this blog but should.
Love is hard.
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Aren't stirrups used for horses?
She thought maybe she was a wild horse, being tamed. Being tamed right here, for a second time, with her strong thigh muscles straining.
They should have a mobile on the cieling. Something to stare at while they tear me apart.
Earlier, she had sat waiting in the stiff chairs, listening to the women laugh. It was hard laughter- like gravel being scooped out from an old Ford pick-up truck- and she wished she were around soft women. Not these women. Not these fast and hard, talking and laughing women.
Then, ordered to strip off everything and sit, with her ass hanging out of the paper gown like a Chinese lantern (her skin was so white, it glowed), she looked backwards at the reflection by the door. Her tattoos looked sad, like animals lost in a vast, pink desert.
Think, think.....what can I think to make time pass? She thought maybe time wasn't really happening, or maybe everything was happening all at once so she could run naked out of this doctors office but really she'd be at home, eating spaghetti dinner with her son.
Maybe Stephen Hawkings was right, she thought. Maybe time is a cycle, and we are only recycled particles. Then, at some time in the past (which was really now), her doctor and her had had the same particles, or were cousin particles that were part of something else.
The magazines were all National Geographic, and on one there was an old man standing on his head. The caption read, "The Secrets to Staying Young." She didn't think she ever wanted to be young again. She had been sad more, and she couldn't understand the world. It was filled with hungry men and broken women.
Now, of course, she could see why.
She liked being older. She thought of Arizona, the place she had loved to hate as a child. Lizards and scorpions would skitter away at the faintest suggestion of touch. She thought maybe it was the same for people, full of sting or poison and afraid of touch. Afraid to be eaten, she thought....
She thought maybe anger was really fear in disguise. All those Arizona scorpions so angry that they would sting themselves to death if provoked. People were that stupid, too, she thought and smiled. Just look at me, eating and eating and eating. Eating out of fear, eating out of rage, eating myself to death. And she knew, too, that her doctor would give her yoga hand-outs and a photo-copied picture of the food pyramid.
Maybe moving to Arizona would give her wrinkles. But who cared about wrinkles? Men might not want to fuck her then, she knew, but who wants to 'get fucked' anyway? Wouldn't it be nicer to be friends? Just wake up and eat breakfast together? Wrinkles be damned....?
Stupid magazine. Eveybody thought they were going to stay young forever. Never die.
If all things shared common particles, and all times existed right NOW, then what was death? You couldn't die, then, because your last breath would be your first. Your energy would explode into the great nothingness (the great everythingness)....and maybe two particles would become babies and maybe two particles would become stars.
Shit, what a thing to think about while naked. She glanced down at the stirrups again. Metal stirrups. Metal. Hard, aching, bright, awful, angry metal.
Her feet went in those damned things. She knew that much. But ever since she'd been two, when they had found blood in her diaper and taken her to the hospital, and then at four when the social workers checked to make sure she wasn't abused, she hadn't wanted to be restrained in stirrups.
She didn't want to complete the questionaire, didn't want to tell her secrets. How many abortions? How many live births?
There was a spot for deceased relatives. They wanted names, dates. She wrote "All my ancestors."
For emergency contacts, she wrote "9-1-1".
The nurses weren't amused. Their hoarse laughter was reserved for lighter topics- grandchildren and graduation- not this kind of horse-shit.
Horse shit. She laughed out loud, thinking about that word. Stirrups are for horses, and I'm full of horse-shit, so I must be a horse after all.
The doctor knocked, and entered, and so began the intrusion. They talked about babies, and she stared up at the lights, watching dust dance in and out. Up on the windowsill, a ceramic frog sat staring at her. Laughing, she thought.
Maybe he was poison, too.
