By Mighty.Beautiful Art Studio

His name was Jazz, and once upon a time, he’d been a dancer.

That’s what he’d been trained to do, dressage, though it hadn’t worked out well for him: he didn’t have the dancer’s body. He wasn’t tall enough or skinny enough. But he did have beautiful gaits, gaits that flooooowwwwwed.

For a long time, he was mine. I miss him

every

day.

Our slow, quiet rides through the woods, just being able to focus on the moments with him. Just his very nature. He was a lot like me, or I was a lot like him, or maybe not at all but whatever, he let me ride him through the woods time and time and time again.

I kept him in a paddock, a field with a covering. Various fields, various coverings over various times, but there were these prickly pear cactus plants because this is, after all Texas, and I love prickly pear plants. They kind of remind me of myself just a little bit in different ways, but if you think about nature enough, all of nature will do that in some way.

I didn’t get out to see him enough, not nearly as much as I wanted to. But sometimes. I close my eyes and remember those rides. I haven’t ridden a horse since he died. It was just like dominoes, and he was the first. Then one thing and another. It was like I had this rock, this mountain keeping me in place, and then it just was gone. After him, everything caved and you know all of #2020 and then suddenly it’s been a year, 18 months, and counting. Day after day after day of this part of my soul missing.

But when I close my eyes, sometimes he comes up to me, and we just stand there, together in some place that exists somewhere else, somehow else.