Mom stopped riding and showing horses
in her thirties. Said she couldn’t afford
another kick to the hip or blow to the head,
another broken shoulder from being bucked.
She couldn’t afford the cost of tack and board,
paychecks spent on veterinary visits,
the increasing emotional price of caring
for an animal a decade or more.

She said her muscles were hurting and her
joints were stiffening. Said she wasn’t
getting any younger and needed to tighten
her reins, hang her stirrups. She needed
to stop pretending to be a cowgirl and start
acting like a grown woman; she needed
to ready her house for a husband
and prepare her pelvis for a child.

She still speaks of sneaking Paul
Mooney, golden-haired and smiling,
into the Twin 27 Drive-In. He lay flat
in the bed of her El Camino, just hours
after chomping her palomino on
the nose for biting him above
the collar bone and drawing blood.

She still speaks of riding her pony, Prince,
for miles around West Somerset. How
she would take him up the porch steps,
past the screen door and into her
living room with hardwood floors to watch
that week’s Bonanza, still sitting on his back.

She speaks these dreams and memories to
me, face tanned with lines etched around
her eyelids, and I can’t help but wonder if
my bank account will dry up in ten years, too

About the Author

Katie Cross is currently a senior English major at the University of Kentucky. She is also the Editor in Chief of Shale, UK’s undergraduate arts journal, the co-president of the Graphite Creative Writing Association and a Gaines Fellow in the Humanities. She enjoys reading, writing, guzzling coffee, playing Mario Kart 64 and jamming to The Beatles. After graduation, she hopes to adopt a dog, write more poetry and generally be less stressed.