^Falabella Marrison^D10 {FIN}

B a
B e
F a l a a


I can't write it. My hands grippin' the pencil tightly, bringin' the charcoal against the white ocean of blankness, but I can't form the letters. Those elusive curves and lines, my small hands are unable ta trace them. Ma tells me it's her own fault, for not sendin' me ta school when I was a youngin. Instead I spent my time with Ol' Rosie, and her calfs. Ma didn't think I might end up wanting ta be able to write. She didn't know how ta, so why should I? She signed her checks with x's just like the rest of the family. No one in my family was smart. I'm not an exceptin. But I still yearn ta write my own name:

Falabella Marrison

or even just Bella.

✯✯✯

"Falabella" gravely, loud, and lovely, I place the voice immediately. Gram was the only person I knew who called me by my full unspellable name, but it was always by her voice that I was able to identify the gray-haired woman. It was one of the first thing I remember, that voice. Ma used to tell me that inn her heyday Gram could sing like a warbler, but in my first memory of her, she sounded more like a dying cow. Her singin' voice wasn't the same as it was at 60 I guess. But she'd tried to sing me to sleep, failin' awfully quickly to send me to dreamland. I shrieked like a newborn calf an' mighta just kicked her in the shin. Gram never sang ta me again.

I walk to her side, her dissipating gray mop she calls hair pulled carefully back into a ponytail. Her bones are brittle as a stag's tail, at least that's what Ma says. I believe Gram will be around forever, her stern but gentle voice will alway's be ringin' around the house, never stoppin' for anything. I know Gram, and she ain't one to kick the bucket quietly. Even now it's clear that she doesn't enjoy that I'ma always havin' to take care of her. She grimaces when she calls me in to help her walk to the bathroom, and moans when she can't make her own meals.

But now she just wants to talk, somethin' I'm pretty darn good at.

"Falabella, baby, tell ya' old grammy as story," she coughs into her hand quietly.

"What about, Gram?" my voice twirls into the air, clear and crisp, like a spring day.

"Anything my love, anything."

"A'ight Gram. Once upon a time..." and I began to weave. Strands of ideas slowly twistin' together to form a story arc. Gram listens patiently as ever, a dutiful audience to the girl who couldn'ta spoke in front of strangers if she tried.

When the princess had been saved, the empire regained, and the evil witch banished, Gram was asleep, and the night had creeped up on me. All was quiet in our sweet little home.

Light steps carried all 130 pounds of me outta Gram's room and inta the king mattress I share with my sister. All was quite. The home void of the usually commotion and bangs, only sound was the softest drips of water upon sheets, as I looked down upon my empty hands to see nothin' but inability starin' up at me.

I fall asleep in a pool of my own tears.

✯✯✯

Years ago Ma told me that horses were people who'd done goofed in an earlier life, and hadda return as an animal. I'd smiled my bucktoothed smile, wide green eyes filled with wonder and humor at a newly learned fact. In reality, Ma was just fillin' little ole me with fake ideas, tryin' ta get a ruse outta me. But for mosta my childhood I believed it, and a teenie tiny parta me believes it now.

When I look into a horses eye, I can see somethin'. When I look at Ol' Rosie or Acer, I don't see the blank stares ya get from pigs or sheep. There's somethin' more to horses. Somethin' great. Somethin' human.

My horses ain't justa buncha empty bodied animals. Their my family, just as much as my sister or Gram. I was only seven when I asked Ma if I could work with the horses, but there ain't been a day since that I've regretted it. There are days when the hours I have with Acer and Rosie seem more precious than the one's I spend tryin' not to puke as Ma and Pa fight over dinner. I wanna run when they start to make them daggers at each other, but I know better. Instead I attempta casually walk away, sayin' that the horses need me, and jog outta the door faster than a steed. The nights are infinitely dark, lamps danglin' like small soldiers attemptin' to ward off an almighty enemy. These failing armies lead the way into the familiar musk of wood and hay, allowin' me to find the humble beasts.

The monsters don't scare me, eyes large and chocolate, legs, powerful and deadly, a juxtaposition to the emerald-eyed, small girl who stands beside them. But I look at them as equals, because ridin' a beast like this doesn't allow me ta let 'em see me as weak. I treat them as equals, they'll reciprocate. That's all I can say 'bout horses.

In the bleakest of nights, I often find myself curlin' up on a sack of hay an' fallin' into sleep next to the soothing huffs of a 7 foot horse. It's in those infinite moments when my name don't matter. But as my eyes rise to dawn against green plains, I know that nothin' is infinite.

Not love.
Nor life.

Only death.

So I take off runnin' into the ember sunrise:

prayin' for another day win Gram,

dreamin' of a life without anger,

and hopin' to one day find my identity with a series of curves and lines.