“Gray Horses”

By Rebecca Karkannen

I wake up before Grandfather starts the fire in the hearth.

I can hear him pour himself a cup of coffee –

taken black in the chipped cup

he insists on never throwing out.

My toes sting in the cold but I sneak out of the blankets.

The morning is silent, holding its breath.

I feel it in the marrow of my bones

and the corners of my eyes.

I tiptoe outside, like a criminal,

wearing only my nightie.

The tops of the trees stretch upward,

probing, feeling, waiting – just like me.

Then I hear a distant rumble,

and an inexplicable smile grows

from my stomach and spreads to my face.

The thunder intensifies to a roar:

the sound of a thousand hoofbeats

echoing against the mountain sides

and filling the valley to its brim.

Gray horses crowd the horizon,

impossibly far away but somehow close enough to touch.

They whinny and toss their heads,

manes flowing for miles behind.

They rush and flail, and

the sky is darker than soot.

The trees cower as the wind attacks them,

twisting them to uproot them.

But I leave the safety of the steps

and stand alone in the grass.

The gray horses gallop wildly, flying freely,

and my heart beats in rhythm with theirs.

The dust they raise falls gently to the earth,

millions upon millions of raindrops that never end.

They start soft and sparse, but soon

they are like piercing needles of ice.

They soak my hair and drench my nightie, and I am

drowning in the gift of the gray horses.

Grandfather grabs me around the waist

and pulls me back inside.

We leave puddles and lakes on the floor.

I shiver, laughing, until he wraps me

in a towel that smells of lavender

and of the summer that passed.

I curl on the sofa with a cup of chocolate

and listen to the fury of the horses

as they stampede over us.

Grandfather looks at me and shakes his head,

but I know that he is listening also.