Horses on the Surface
BY MELISSA CUNDIEFF
Hours after my father died,
I walked to Walmart for water
and, carrying the weight,
stepped onto an armadillo’s
crushed shell. There was nothing
between us but bright air
and the stuck image of my father’s
open mouth. By the end
of this movie, I said to the armadillo,
you will be reborn as a horse,
and the paper tangled
in your claws will be a distant
memory. In my father’s bed,
I drank a cup of water, wearing
the white t-shirt he died in.
Look at us now, I said, grief
making me think in rings,
we’re the same. Last year,
my father and I drove
down Highway 7, farm animals
only in focus once they were
in the rearview mirror, like space
and time were consolations
we’d never need to receive.
I turned the radio to a song
I hoped my father would remember,
and I promised the impossible—
we weren’t going anywhere
anytime soon. Hours after
my father died, his face in profile
imprinted on my mind—his t-shirt,
no longer damp from a last bath,
held the smell of his living body.
Come back, I said, but he didn’t.
Driving past them last year,
the horses on the field’s surface
were each other’s givens,
their necks bent in instinct
with no need to look up.
