Horses 2
He asks me what the hormones feel like I’m a horse. I’m a horse with four legs, like many horses; I have my own way of moving Walking Canter Gallop Stop that's pretty universal but the rhythm, buh-bum buh-bum buh bum be bum bum-bum be, bum-bum-bum depends on me. Muscles. Blood. Spirit. Anyway, wearing sweatpants, I’m comfy with my canter: it’s sometimes bumpy, but it’s mine buh-bud-dum buh-bud-dum I know what sort of horse I am; a fireflower bred from her own capillaries; so when they give me pills (and I can’t talk for other horses) Everything is off. I’m still a horse I remember canter, walk, gallop, stop I know what legs are – I have legs - but it takes forever to adjust (now leg isn’t mine, this what, muscle, blood, how -) and once (if!) leg starts feeling mine again I’m cantering like another horse a kind of alien invasion, (who was it? gallop? do I stop?) half remembered majesty of movement feels like another galaxy I have always felt horses were from another world: look sideways to go forward, pure athletic defiance; I hate watching people saddle them. (he says "that’s the best description I’ve heard"; I remember he's there, on another line: I look out across the old castle, shrug.) I swear I once had wings.
November 2025
A few years after I wrote the poem, and a few months after the conversation that inspired it, I was in a huge bookstore. I picked up a book and turned to read this on an inside cover:
inside the delicate skin of my body,
there pumps an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Ada Limón