Bella
one/one
They tell me that she loves me, and it’s a notion of which I haven’t thought much.
She was never mine to begin with. I watched her for the first time in the hands of another, an emotional affair without conscious thought. I longed to partner with her, to know what such flight may have felt like, to know the feel of her maw in my own hands. She was a luxurious machine with the forward demeanor to contend the force of her stride, and it was something that I wished to sense with more than just sight. How fortuitous, then, that I’d be given the very opportunity to do so, for her to reside in the pit of my palm only the next summer.
With that, I learned that she was deeper than I would have believed, like the blind advancement from automatic transition to manual. She was a loose-cannon learning process, the epitome of trial and error. She was an unorthodox teacher, and what she taught me was war.
And so now, she turns and she watches intently as I come for her down the stone aisle, and I think back to the early years when she and I were only acquaintances. Would she have displayed even an iota of interest, or would I only have been another client? I approach and she sweeps her head forth again with a loose visage, comfortable in my vicinity. Would she have asserted contempt, before? Would her eyes have flashed with disdain, her hair tossed in hauteur?
Her neutrality seems so foreign, and all the same, it feels like home.
There was a time in which every of our interactions was combat. My nerves would quake with an ill dread as she and I would walk down the hill and to our battlefield. She knew of it all as well as I did. She could feel the tension in my hands and the rigidity of my legs, and she’d toy with it until my patience proved null. Where words would fail, I would turn to the once generous contact with her stony mouth, and take from her what she sought to take from me. The reins would yield no slack, her pace would blunder betwixt our conflicting ambitions. The stubborn brute would pace in loathing directly before the fence she wished only to take at full force and no less, but a kick at her flanks would eventually wrench us over from a standstill. One, two even strides and a hefty spot, she takes the second bounce with no restraint, ears strained vigilantly forth. Like a wind shear, that’s when she would take to her own velocity. And by the time that I could bring her back down, our hearts and our lungs toiled as one.
“Take her again.”
Rinse and repeat.
It was only the beginning then, and how I yearn for more time now. Untrainable, they call her. Eighteen-years-old, and as adamant as a green filly. Straight through retirement, her Thoroughbred blood still runs hot.
Now, though, when I come around, I’m to take her to the beach.
And it’s then that we’re children, again.
Where I once was afraid, I know that I now belong. When I once would feel the lurch of anxiety in my gut at the thought of the atrocities my monster is capable of, I now only laugh. Nestled in the slope of her back, extending my legs to become those of her own, I am safe. I talk to her, I tell her to take it steady. The salted gusts tease wiry and sable tresses of her overgrown mane, and where the tide breaks, the ocean’s fingers reach and swathe ‘round her fetlocks, swirling in the tiny maelstroms that her hoof prints leave behind. The stark grey of overcast spans above, reaching past the trees stooping from the bluffs and bundling at the skyline where a mass of slate lies dormant in wait of eventide. The pelagic thunder and sonance of seabirds renders all quiet. My voice seeps into an ethereal void, her signature falls from cut-time, and her breath gathers stability with every intake. She becomes soft, if only for a moment.
Nevertheless, when it comes time, she knows. The voltage, no matter how surreptitious, passes in between us, paying heed to no physical boundary. The next motion I make is signal enough, and she lunges into pace, racing Poseidon himself.
How far can we make it before the next crest falls?
And me, I’m not afraid. Not afraid as her muscles recoil from the restraint I place on her lovely and frantic stride. Not afraid, just as she had taught me not to be.
We’ll return home to argent skies and a breeze combing through the grasses of summer rain. She’ll be saturated to the knees with cold salt water and sand. Upon my dismounting, she’ll rub her brow against my shoulder as if intent on knocking me to the arena’s ground, but I’ll face her and draw apart the curtain of her forelock to briefly scratch where she pleased. I’ll then place an open palm on either side of her sultry red wine neck to study the contours of her long and convex face, kneading my fingers down over the taut muscle sealed in fog-dampened flesh. Her ears won’t pin and she won’t once flinch away, as she may have done those many years ago.
They tell me that she loves me, and that I am one of the few whom she will behave for. I begin to believe it as I take a hand to her cheek and pull another down the slope of her muzzle, her halved, ebon eyes resolute and even.
They tell me that she loves me.
What a suiting name possessed by the beast that loves me.
Bella. Beautiful.
She was never mine to begin with. I watched her for the first time in the hands of another, an emotional affair without conscious thought. I longed to partner with her, to know what such flight may have felt like, to know the feel of her maw in my own hands. She was a luxurious machine with the forward demeanor to contend the force of her stride, and it was something that I wished to sense with more than just sight. How fortuitous, then, that I’d be given the very opportunity to do so, for her to reside in the pit of my palm only the next summer.
With that, I learned that she was deeper than I would have believed, like the blind advancement from automatic transition to manual. She was a loose-cannon learning process, the epitome of trial and error. She was an unorthodox teacher, and what she taught me was war.
And so now, she turns and she watches intently as I come for her down the stone aisle, and I think back to the early years when she and I were only acquaintances. Would she have displayed even an iota of interest, or would I only have been another client? I approach and she sweeps her head forth again with a loose visage, comfortable in my vicinity. Would she have asserted contempt, before? Would her eyes have flashed with disdain, her hair tossed in hauteur?
Her neutrality seems so foreign, and all the same, it feels like home.
There was a time in which every of our interactions was combat. My nerves would quake with an ill dread as she and I would walk down the hill and to our battlefield. She knew of it all as well as I did. She could feel the tension in my hands and the rigidity of my legs, and she’d toy with it until my patience proved null. Where words would fail, I would turn to the once generous contact with her stony mouth, and take from her what she sought to take from me. The reins would yield no slack, her pace would blunder betwixt our conflicting ambitions. The stubborn brute would pace in loathing directly before the fence she wished only to take at full force and no less, but a kick at her flanks would eventually wrench us over from a standstill. One, two even strides and a hefty spot, she takes the second bounce with no restraint, ears strained vigilantly forth. Like a wind shear, that’s when she would take to her own velocity. And by the time that I could bring her back down, our hearts and our lungs toiled as one.
“Take her again.”
Rinse and repeat.
It was only the beginning then, and how I yearn for more time now. Untrainable, they call her. Eighteen-years-old, and as adamant as a green filly. Straight through retirement, her Thoroughbred blood still runs hot.
Now, though, when I come around, I’m to take her to the beach.
And it’s then that we’re children, again.
Where I once was afraid, I know that I now belong. When I once would feel the lurch of anxiety in my gut at the thought of the atrocities my monster is capable of, I now only laugh. Nestled in the slope of her back, extending my legs to become those of her own, I am safe. I talk to her, I tell her to take it steady. The salted gusts tease wiry and sable tresses of her overgrown mane, and where the tide breaks, the ocean’s fingers reach and swathe ‘round her fetlocks, swirling in the tiny maelstroms that her hoof prints leave behind. The stark grey of overcast spans above, reaching past the trees stooping from the bluffs and bundling at the skyline where a mass of slate lies dormant in wait of eventide. The pelagic thunder and sonance of seabirds renders all quiet. My voice seeps into an ethereal void, her signature falls from cut-time, and her breath gathers stability with every intake. She becomes soft, if only for a moment.
Nevertheless, when it comes time, she knows. The voltage, no matter how surreptitious, passes in between us, paying heed to no physical boundary. The next motion I make is signal enough, and she lunges into pace, racing Poseidon himself.
How far can we make it before the next crest falls?
And me, I’m not afraid. Not afraid as her muscles recoil from the restraint I place on her lovely and frantic stride. Not afraid, just as she had taught me not to be.
We’ll return home to argent skies and a breeze combing through the grasses of summer rain. She’ll be saturated to the knees with cold salt water and sand. Upon my dismounting, she’ll rub her brow against my shoulder as if intent on knocking me to the arena’s ground, but I’ll face her and draw apart the curtain of her forelock to briefly scratch where she pleased. I’ll then place an open palm on either side of her sultry red wine neck to study the contours of her long and convex face, kneading my fingers down over the taut muscle sealed in fog-dampened flesh. Her ears won’t pin and she won’t once flinch away, as she may have done those many years ago.
They tell me that she loves me, and that I am one of the few whom she will behave for. I begin to believe it as I take a hand to her cheek and pull another down the slope of her muzzle, her halved, ebon eyes resolute and even.
They tell me that she loves me.
What a suiting name possessed by the beast that loves me.
Bella. Beautiful.