Heartache | Ghosted by Kim Suttell
Esther Sadoff | I don't know if my mother always loved horses
or if she just loves them because my sister does.
My mother made us ride because we were shy.
If you can tame a horse you can tame anything.
But we still whispered into our teacher's ears.
Were too scared to ask to use the bathroom.
When I got a blue ribbon riding my pony,
she let me quit but my sister continued.
My sister says she loves the dust, the smell of hay,
even mucking out a dirty stall.
When we used to play pretend, she was always
sixteen with a black mare she tamed herself.
Today my mother rushes to the barn to watch my sister
canter around the ring, hooves kicking up towers of dust.
My father stands outside trying to clear his allergies.
And that's where I stand too. Trying to wipe my eyes and nose,
breathing the fresh air of the blurry, tear-stained hills.
I only came to see if a fox might cross our path,
to see what the barnyard cats were up to.
My mother is still the one who tells everyone what to do
though I'm not sure she ever got a horse to listen.
My mother made us ride because we were shy.
If you can tame a horse you can tame anything.
But we still whispered into our teacher's ears.
Were too scared to ask to use the bathroom.
When I got a blue ribbon riding my pony,
she let me quit but my sister continued.
My sister says she loves the dust, the smell of hay,
even mucking out a dirty stall.
When we used to play pretend, she was always
sixteen with a black mare she tamed herself.
Today my mother rushes to the barn to watch my sister
canter around the ring, hooves kicking up towers of dust.
My father stands outside trying to clear his allergies.
And that's where I stand too. Trying to wipe my eyes and nose,
breathing the fresh air of the blurry, tear-stained hills.
I only came to see if a fox might cross our path,
to see what the barnyard cats were up to.
My mother is still the one who tells everyone what to do
though I'm not sure she ever got a horse to listen.
Esther Sadoff is a teacher and writer from Columbus, Ohio. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Little Patuxent Review, Jet Fuel Review, Cathexis Poetry Northwest, Pidgeonholes, Santa Clara Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, among others.
Kim Suttell is a collagist just emerging from a career in bureaucracy and spreadsheets. Paper, as her medium, speaks in torn edges, subtle curls, and tiny glimpses of previous use. The grid template references both quilts and ledgers, places where individual pieces must interact to create a new whole. It is the point to limit the format so that color, texture, and fragmentary images make their own movement and meaning.
Instagram: Page48paperart
Instagram: Page48paperart
