I thought that I was hungry for blood
Maybe I'm just hungry for love
Tear from a woman on the shore
You prairie ghost on a cottage hall
Oh, the mermaids have sharp teeth
Razor blades all in your feet
There’s a moment一singular, clear一when she realizes just how alone she has become.
Always the rock.
Always for the waves to rush upon.
The small black mare had seen much, done much. She was tired. It showed in the depths of her honey colored eyes, in the way her head sagged towards the groundーher sinew lank, shoulders dropped. The withered edge of her spine. She has never been the most beautiful thing and she knows it. Gently accepts her place in a world of roses. Ysée was a blunted thorn, useless.
Maybe once she had been sharp, able to draw blood. Once she had held her chin high and looked defiantly in the eyes of her oppressors一
Those days have gone away. She has been chipped down to the bone, to the marrow. Ysée feels the years pile up on her withers like smooth stones. It feels like a million days are all above her blocky head, pressing and crushing her with the memories. Oh, how she wishes she could forget them. Forget all the tangled, twisted things from her past.
Cautiously the tiny mare walks across the wide breadth of the field. Her eyes are cast towards the grass beneath her hooves. Her knees ache and her jaw. She chews sullenly, working the tension.
She can smell the salt from the sea still on her body. Crusted in the long strands of her tail, in the hairs inside her ears. Ysée couldn’t remember how long she swam. How long she was lost in the current, the gulls lulling her to doze and wake with sea water in her nose. Then she had been spat out on a foreign shore under a full moon. Cold, unsure, and feeling much like a filly who had just come into the world. Her legs felt powerless beneath her, she stumbled and shook.
Now, she moves under sunlight. Feeling the pale warmth, seeing the cloudless blue sky. There are other horses close to where she moves. She can hear them. Feel their energies like flies buzzing around her head. Ysée shakes herself again. Her delicate ears twitch, listen. She wonders where she might fit in in a place like this, it feels too large for her.
Ysée finds herself beneath a tree.
Old and sprawling.
The leaves have begun to turn the gentlest orange, brushed by the autumn breeze. There she folds her legs beneath her and fallsーwith a grunt and a sighーonto the grass. Her nose brushes against her belly, her leg, checking herself. The black mare closes her eyes and she thinks about what was now behind her and what lay ahead in this new world.