SmokeLong Quarterly

I have two horses. One lives in my bedroom, the other in the garden. They share a superimposed domesticity, both a smudged off-white, the white of a washed-out cotton cloth. I myself live a domestic life without being domestic, much like my horses. The horse in the garden can be seen through my bedroom window, and the other horse is in the room, without ever moving unless I move it. The two horses have never seen each other and live a solitary existence, much like myself. There is also a dog, a shaggy walnut coloured creature with dark button eyes, who is acquainted with everyone. None of us have ever strayed; it is of no consequence that some of us could have, and others couldn’t. We are equal in our staying. The house commands it, without ever having said so, without having laid out any ground rules. It is just there. It has been there a long time. Standing its ground, something houses must do, like trees, or fences or anything living with legs. The dog walks about the most, crossing and recrossing thresholds. When she meets the horse in the garden, the horse is a dog; when she meets me, I am a dog too. Only the horse in the bedroom is not a dog. The horse in the bedroom is the horse in the bedroom, white the way a white, washed-out cotton cloth is still white. I am the only one who is attired, wearing the usual garments of the female persuasion, – a term used often incorrectly, much to its own abhorrence. As it is to mine. I have been superimposed upon genetically. But so has everyone, the horses and the dog, too. Only the glass of the bedroom window is released from such an imposition and the obligations of seeing. Yet the glass is not free either; it is fixed, held tightly in its wooden frame. The frame is held by the wall, the wall by the other walls which are held together by the floor and the ceiling. There is no escaping the whole, whether it is the house or the horses, the dog or the girl. The horse in the garden runs in circles close to the fence, his mane flying away from his face. The girl doesn’t see it. The dog doesn’t see it. The horse in the bedroom doesn’t know it.