REINCARNATION

I do not revere the butterfly. Change doesn't happen like that. Whenever I have been pushed to grow, I did not get to swaddle myself in a cozy blanket, take a long nap and then emerge beautiful, ready to take flight. No, that's not what happened at all.

I was scared to ride horses. I don't when it happened exactly. The fear slowly seeped into me while I was busy trying to survive. The worst of it came when horses began to fear me. A mutual distrust, both trying to stay ahead of the other. I rode with my legs stretched out away from the rib cage, toes barely in the stirrups, my hands clenched and sawing on a snaffle bit. Sometimes the fluttering in my guts would get too intense and I would jump off my confused mount who was dancing around trying desperately to understand the threat. The shame was overwhelming and came out in angry bursts, in painful howls and with a pointing finger. Who was I if I was scared of horses?

I used to race bareback across badger holes and rock piles, jumping logs and scattering ducks from the irrigation ditches. I loved summer midnight rides and there wasn't a wild steer I couldn't run down. I had been riding since before I was walking and horses loved me, they loved me.

So, I had gotten some wrecks. A counterfeit sorel named Cheech bucked me off, a colt had spooked and drug me around the round pen a bit. Atlas had jumped out from under me when I was trying to get the gate and a big dun named Pirate ran off when were surprised by a herd of wild horses out on the permit. I blamed them, this string of hard lucks that I had inherited from the skinny buckaroo kid who had come before me. It wasn't them though, not really. It was my legs unwilling to signal on their ribcages, to sit firm and tall and steady in the saddle and give a loose reign. And the reason I couldn't do that was a whole mess of punishing thoughts in my head that sounded a lot like my own voice. It was script written by men who threatened me, whenever they felt threatened by me. Men, a man, a boy who needed me to be small and scared and less of a cowboy than him. He stole from me, the best that I was, a woman who was loved by horses.

I wanted to be swaddled. To hide in the dark and turn off my lights. Take a long rest. And then I would have liked to reappear, saddle up and take flight. Instead, I had to leave, fall apart, face down into the dirt, get back up, dust off, fall down, dust off, fall in, dust off and finally get back on. I emerged back into the open, without wings or new colors but more like a bear fresh out of hibernation. Not well rested but emaciated, with sore muscles and bad breath, a little jumpy and disconnected. It took a Spring and then a Summer to fully regain my flesh.

It didn't happen all at once and there were set backs. Like that time when we moving our cows across Devils ridge and the wind turned the rain sideways against us so that the cows tried to make a break the wrong way. I was riding my black horse and trying to be strong but you yelled, and he spooked and it all came back. I was terrified, shaking. I was no longer at home in my saddle and I cried. I wanted to be concooned, to be treated like something fragile and precious. But the rain didn't quit and the cows didn't stop. It all had gotten worse until somewhere inside me I found the reserves that I had been storing for this moment of weakness in my winter season. I found them in my guts and I straightened my back, put my heels down and with that I changed a little. I added color to myself and I swear to you, when I was trotting back to the trailer, leaving behind nothing except a job well done. My black horse and I, could have taken flight.