Dead horse
by Emily Hsi
“Pensive,” Deborah Butterfield, 1997
By the time I realized she didn’t love me anymore,
I’d been beating the damn thing for months.
It wintered deep into the season,
the trees stripped to their naked boughs.
All around me I remembered
the ways we convince ourselves of something
still alive. The half-shed leaves outside
flickered with each aborted breath.
The faded flower she gifted me for my birthday
lay pinned by the lips upon my window.
On the lawn, the wooden horse stood dumbly,
its neck craned in a pretense of pasture.
Like the trees, its legs were made of other limbs,
arms, stems, sprouts. A bird, still moving,
settled onto its back. Stupid animal,
hoping its existence would spur another
into awakening. As if we can’t tell
that someone’s dead by the way they steep
in silence, sick and slow. Maybe that horse’s still-life
reminded the bird of its lofty skyward kingdom,
where it could watch the rest of us creatures
whipping wooden bovine,
settling in our leather saddles,
pushing our knees into the body of the beast
and hoping something will start.