what have you got to say for yourself then?

something

here's a story, to fill in the space.

I wrote this last week, we are quiet at work so I can listen to radiohead very loud through my headphones and keep myself amused for about eight hours. I love the quiet times at work.
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Vigil’s bronco

It is summer and my horse is in the bottom yard, near the house, so I can hear him neigh for his breakfast every morning. I like to lay in bed watching him and listening to his neigh, until my guilt and selfishness and his desperation makes me rise.
He prefers to be in his paddock where the wind blows about him and there is good grass to eat, sand hollows to roll in, space to move about in.

But he looks so inviting in his yard. The railing is nice and high, like a real horse yard should be. He has a shed to shelter in, with round steel poles and brackets so I can shut him in, although I never have a valid reason for doing so. There is a manger for him, a hook for his hay net, and a box for my brushes. For me it is a very satisfying place, though for him it is frustrating as he cannot move about and cannot escape the irritation that is me, a young girl smitten with her horse.

He stands close to the railing and I estimate that if I am very clever I will be able to reach his back from the rails. His back looks so inviting – golden and shining and soft and flat, too delicious to not be sat upon. I climb up and perch on the top rail like a cowboy watching a wild horse being broken, just like in the movies. Stretch my left leg across the gap; the space of nothingness seems as wide as the Grand Canyon does in the photos my parents took when they lived in America.

I can’t believe my parents lived in America and now I am forbidden to ask anything about it. There are so many photos of my parents - sitting in the Nevada desert with people they knew, exploring the Petrified Forest, posing with Aunt Lula’s mare and foal in Texas. From Mexico they bought home a print of a magnificent Appaloosa bronco, it is signed “Vigil” in the bottom right hand corner. I stare at Vigil’s bronco hanging on the wall for hours, listening for my parent’s silent stories for so long that eventually I think I hear them. But it is only my own stories that I have made, to fill in the hours of silence.
It is so unfair. So selfish of them. I should be allowed to know their stories, have my head filled with dreams of the things that I will do with my life when I grow up. But all the stories are forbidden, the photos kept high up in cupboards, the movie films still in their cases. No-one in my family is a story teller, yet they have all lived so many stories, right from the start of the century until now, 77 years later.

My leg hooks over the wither of my horse and I push myself off the railings and onto his back.
I remember thinking, as my left leg crossed the great divide, that everything was going so well with my plan. Then the world bounced around and something hit my chest harder than anything, my teeth clacked together and I was laying in the dirt and could not breathe.
No matter how hard I tried I just could not breathe. I could not call out for my mother, no noise would come out of me. I could not even cry, the tears had no air to push them from my eyes.

I am dying.

I am going to die.

I have hit the railing and snapped my ribs and they have punctured my lungs and I am going to lay here in the dirt until I die. I look up from the dirt at the house but there is no-one there, my mother is inside, sleeping all day again. I will die here and she will not find me until I am covered in flies with a little dribble of blood coming out of my mouth and my eyes open, glazed over.
It takes a long time for my breath to come back. An eternal length of time passes until finally I can make shallow little breaths that gradually increase in size and I think of the great bellows of blacksmiths, huffing and puffing away at the flames. I huff and puff at the dirt, it blows back onto my face.
I look over at my horse and he is looking at me and I know he hates me and does not want to be shut in this yard. I lay there trying to breathe and look at my horse; even when I can breath properly again I remain laying in the dirt looking at him.

“I hate you. I want to go up to my paddock. I have been stuck here in this little yard for days and I am bored and I hate you.”

I get up and walk over to the house; shock induces a flood of howling tears on the way. But my mother is asleep and I stand in the doorway of her bedroom, still crying but silent now as I know that any noise other than her snoring may wake her and then things will only get worse. So I stand and absorb the thought that it really is true, she would have no idea from day to day whether I was dead or alive.
She snores and snores. I could kill her and she wouldn’t know. I could bash in her head right now with a brick and roll her out of bed and tell the police that she must have fallen and that would be the end of that, no-one would be any wiser and then she really wouldn’t know if I was dead or not, because she would be.
But I turn and take myself off to the bathroom, being my own mother, wetting a flannel with cool water and wiping off the tears that have smeared the dust on my face. I wipe and splash and dry my face, go back outside, put the halter on my horse and lead him up to the paddock.