I hate passing the pasture, the barn, all of it reeks of him, of memories we once had. I hate noticing the mound of dirt two horses stand on. Maybe they didn’t realize that is where their king took his final breath. Maybe standing on the place where he fell, makes them feel more connected to him. To me, it is a sacred grave. To everyone else, it was a place to collect shit as if it was the final middle finger to him and me.

Today marks the anniversary of his death. I collect the bracelet made out of his hair and put in around my wrist, instantly, my body starts shaking, wishing I could take back all the moments I was angry at him. I wish I could take back all the moments that forced me to abandon him without a second thought — I was too selfish to be his rider. Too greedy to even think how he might feel, and yet, I have the audacity to mourn him as if we were actually horse and rider. The truth is, we were never that close. His arthritis and my illnesses kept us worlds away from what we could have been.

The fairytales you hear about horses and riders being one are lies. It is not love at first sight, nor is it the two fighting against all the odds to be with each other. Frankly, in my betrayal, I might as well have been the one to inject him with the euthanasia serum myself.

***  

            I sigh a heavy breath and pull my old barn boots out of a box in my closet. They are still caked in mud from a year ago, their red walls that used to make me think of red roses now only remind me of the murder that I committed.  

            For ten years, I had him. For ten years, he thought I neglected him due to a sickness that I couldn’t control. I didn’t deserve any condolences for my loss. I marked myself as a monster; he died with me believing that I was a monster — Granted, I wasn’t the one who forced him to the ground. I wasn’t the one who sawed off his tail. But I was the one who turned my back on him in the final moments when he needed me most. It’s funny how a year later, the tables have turned. I need him, and he is nowhere in sight.  

***

I got Otis when I was thirteen. That year was challenging for me. The February of that year, a gunman tried to take my life away from me. I could barely go to school. I would collapse into screaming fits as my mom tried to drop me off. Buddy, my horse at the time, my gentle giant, was my only therapy in a world where people didn’t think I was affected by the shooting.

Later, when the Colorado sky burned hot and flies nipped at horse ankles, I lost him. Buddy, the horse that I leased, was taken away from me due to his owners no longer caring about me. They made my father tell me the news.

 I ran upstairs, tore up pictures of us together before grabbing the reins I had bought for him with the money that I got from my birthday. I stared down at them.

The first symptoms of depression took hold of me, forcing me to think that it was better to end my life than to try and overcome the circumstances. My disease wormed its way into my brain and made me consider death over life. Nothing seemed to excite me anymore. Not the renter horses, I was now forced to ride in Westernaires. Not my friends who made jokes as if one-liners and zingers could fix the damage that had been done to us a few months prior. Not my family, still shaken by the fact that they almost lost me in February. Not my sister and brother who knew that I wanted to die. Nothing. I was empty. A blank piece of paper swirling and tumbling like I was caught up in a snow storm. Ice burned my veins, my heart, my body. I was a girl frozen in time, and when that snow melted a few days before Christmas, I wasn’t, and couldn’t be thawed.

***

The sky seared brightly. It had been the first Christmas in years where Colorado didn’t wake up to a white Christmas. I should have realized then that maybe it was God opening up the sky and telling me that he finally heard my prayers. I didn’t wake up early that year. There was no glee on my face. I sat there quietly and opened package after package of tack. Part of me thought that my parents just didn’t have enough time to return this stuff that was meant for Buddy and me. The same colors of forest green and navy blue. A fancy saddle with my symbol, a rose, carved in sterling silver on the pommel that I thought would have looked beautiful on Buddy. Brand new reins that had that used leather smell to them. New gear. Everything new or slightly used.

“Well, all I need is a horse,” I stated. I paused. “Which reminds me, there is a young filly that needs a home in Greeley. I was thinking we could check her out. She’s free.” My mom and dad exchanged looks. My dad shook his head.

“You got tack. We will talk about getting a horse some other time,” he stated. His voice calm but stern. In so many ways, my dad reminded me of the father that Tim McGraw played in the movie Flicka. Every essence of him was Tim McGraw except for the fact that I had the misfortune of being born an urbanite whose parents forced her into dancing, singing, and acting at a young age. I was like Katie in the movie, so quick to want to find my own destiny. Sometimes, I feel like that’s why I chose horse riding because my family didn’t know anything about it at first. My brother hated being outside in the dust and mud. And my sister never had the chance to be in Westernaires. She chose Irish Step Dancing instead.

I felt like my dad, and I had a special connection. He was flag dad for my team. Every time in practice and shows, he would hand me my flag before cupping his hand upwards to symbolize a horseshoe. “Horseshoe up, baby girl,” is what he would always say to me. I’d make the symbol quickly before urging my horse forward into the starting position. Frankly, when it came to horses, my dad was the one who took to it like he had been a Mexican rancher all of his life.

And it was in my father’s eyes that I saw just how bad I looked. My hair was matted and dull. Showers weren’t a thing I could bring myself to do. Braces glumly clung to my teeth. My eyes, once a deep brown like dirt, warmed in the Mexican sun, nothing but a dull dirt color now. If he could, my father would have stolen Buddy. I didn’t know back then, but he begged and tried to buy Buddy from the Peters. They wouldn’t hear of it. Instead, they left three girls broken-hearted on the arena floor —that’s right, I wasn’t the only one who got fucked in their business transaction.

  I needed Buddy back. My life depended on him. He was my solace after the shooting. He was the only thing that felt right in a foreign world where I no longer felt grounded. It felt as if I was forced into a dimension where I wasn’t supposed to be alive. I clung to anything, my mother’s hand, my father’s voice, the reins, the pommel —anything to convince me that I wasn’t gone. I wasn’t dead.  But at this point, I’d been searching for something that could provide the comfort that I’d been drained of. I needed a security blanket. Something soft to dull the harsh, cold cage of my mind. I needed someone to look me in the eyes, silently understand that I wasn’t alone. I just needed someone to be in this prison with me. I needed an animal that could harness wind and take me away from this place.

  To me, it felt like autumn. My family and I were walking along with the horse stalls of our community barn. Hannah, my sister, stopped in front of a stall with a 14-hands-high, deep chestnut-colored horse.
            “Hey, buddy. How are you doing?” she asked as she opened the gate.

“Hannah, get out of there, that’s not your horse,” I shouted. My sister disregarded me. My mom said that we were going to get in trouble. My dad pointed at the name on the card on the side of the stall.

“What does it say?” my dad asked. I looked down and read aloud the information.

“His name is Otis,” I said, frankly, thinking that name was utterly ridiculous. To this day, I still believe that his name is a cruel joke. “R. Lozano?”

“There’s another Lozano?” my mom asked. I cupped my hands over my mouth as the realization that he might be mine formed in my head. I kept reading the information. The last name was spelled exactly like mine. I read the phone number, and that’s where my heart burst in my chest. He wasn’t mine. I couldn’t tell at the time if I was disappointed or that pure feeling of hope already wafted away from me. The phone number wasn’t something I recognized, so I instantly pulled my hands away from my face and shoved my hands in my pockets. He isn’t mine. I finally looked up to see my complete idiot of a sister awkwardly placing the halter around this horse’s face. She clicked the lead into place on the metal ring and opened the door to let him out.

“Hannah, that’s not your horse!” I yelled, finally having enough of her shenanigans.

“No, he’s YOUR horse,” my dad stated. I stopped in my tracks. I felt the space around me, dissipate and disperse. Getting a horse for Christmas is one thing. But getting a possible cure to a disease that continuously talked me into suicide, was a sign from God. At that moment, it felt like God was saying, “I know you need him, just like he needs you.” My sister walked out. So much pride was on her face. Otis walked gracefully out behind her. She handed me the lead rope as my father explained that Hannah found him up in Greeley. In between classes, she had been looking, searching for a cure for her little sister. A girl who she knew would be dead before the snow melted.

I placed my hand on the bridge of his nose. He bent into it; his long whiskers tickled my palm. His heavy snorts provided a sense of reassurance that I could move on.

***

The bliss of a honeymoon was short-lived. In the second week of having Otis, he got hurt. He was kicked in the pasture. My father went to blanket Otis that night as a harsh, bitter cold blew over the foothills. My father whistled and watched in horror as Otis limped to the gate. His right leg was dripping blood. Crunching sounds bounced off the treetops. The vet explained to me that Otis might have to be put down. I didn’t sleep that night. Red rimmed eyes watched the snow falling, knowing there was nothing I could do.

I’d seen horses get kicked before, but Otis got kicked hard in the shoulder. The crunching sound echoing from his arm — bone fractures. We are lucky that was all it was. Had it been a slice in his bone, he would have been gone before the winter melted, and I would have lost yet another thing that kept me grounded to the Earth.

My father and I woke up early every morning. The cold winter sunrise nibbled at my skin as we fed him his medication. A shaved patch on his shoulder, the main indication that he was now broken — flexed happily as he bent down to eat his grain, applesauce, and medication spiked breakfast. Part of me wished that I, too, had battle scars — ones that weren’t invisible.

I couldn’t ride him — not for several months. I walked him, a lead rope the only connection between his head and my hand. He yanked me around like a rag doll. Frankly, he’s been the only man who I let push and pull me around. I hated the haughty personality that Otis possessed. The sheer stubbornness and bull-like temper that proved to the world that he still thought he was a stallion even though, everyone could tell that when he made love to his numerous girlfriends in the pasture, he was shooting blanks — a situation I found hilarious when I caught him trying to mount mare after mare. Perhaps, that is how Otis ended up becoming alpha of the herd. Maybe he became king because he slept his way to the top. Furthermore, when he chose to mount mares in the pasture, I found it hilarious that the perfect equestrian girls who had the gall to show up to practice in designer boots, pants, and state of the art velvet helmets, screamed in horror at the sight of horses being horses.

Watching Otis assert his male dominance over their mares was our private middle figure to the frilly girls who thought they could look down on him and me. Though Otis was old and broken and I — just was broken, we still ran circles around these frilly girls. We would run barrel and pole patterns while I held a flag and watched as the fabric rippled in the manufactured wind.

The first time I got on him after his accident, he tried to throw me. Granted, I tried to throw him into a flying right lead change — and in a manner of protests, he stopped quickly, snorted, and proceed into a left lead gallop. This is how many of our rides would go. It was a constant battle between the two of us. In the end, no one won.  That was the funny thing about us. Somedays, it was as if we were in each other’s minds. Hungry for the rush of running against an open sky. Other days, it was a war between us in which both of us finished the ride sweaty and heaving for breath. On days when my illness had me in its bitter grasp were the days when Otis tried to push my buttons the most.

You know, horses are funny about that. They can sense when there is something off in their rider. They can detect if the rider is leaning too much in the saddle, and usually will adjust — granted, I taught Otis about trick riding and so — no shits were given as I was struggling to stay on — he picked up being a trick horse super quick. Essentially, Otis — when he wanted to be — was a horse that could do anything — horses can sense the energy and emotion. Perhaps on the days when my sickness was too powerful of an enemy, Otis felt it and knew why his lead remained on the pole outside the pasture. When I started coming around less and less, he stopped waiting every day at three by the gate. He started retreating further back into the pasture. He stopped expecting me. I would watch from the school bus on the road. His head would bend down, and he would teeter back to his shelter. Eventually, he never bothered going and standing by the gate.

***

I never wanted to return back to the barn. I was too willing to let the horrific events of that day wipe out all the moments of victories that Otis and I had. I willed myself to open my front door and walk down that hill to the barn where my horse used to wait for me so many years ago.

I finally open my eyes and force myself to open the gate that divides the mundane world from the world of the past. The minute the gate swings open with a squeak, my mind slips back in time. The open pathways are foreign to me. I steady my breathing and approach the first place our journey began, his quarantine pen.

I stop in my tracks and notice that his pen is no longer built. It is but rubble leaning on the fence. The gate that he once walked out on that Christmas is now rusty and abandoned. It’s broken and discarded kind of like Otis and me. It’s as if the decade that we once spent here are now ghosts of the past.

I remember how my illness had gotten worse. I wasn’t around much anymore. Instead, I was forced to spend hours in bed. My fingers were running over the self-harm scars that kissed my skin. I couldn’t go to him. I couldn’t drag myself to be with him.

Perhaps, this is where the true story lies. Otis and I were not the fairytale horse and rider that one might think. In a way, we were both broken, locked up in cages that required the other one to free us. Days away from him were the days when I was fighting hard to stay alive. I once thought Otis was my solid reason for living. I was a fool to think I would get better.

My legs wander around the stalls of the horses. Fresh manure is piled high in the corners of their stalls.

I head over to where our tack locker once stood. In its place, a new locker stands. It is newly built with pictures of a girl with her white mustang. I guess they removed our locker. Yet another item that wiped away the memory of Otis. In truth, this barn was never my home. I don’t give a shit about the girls and families who live here. In a way, my home is gone now. It’s far away in hopefully a good place where arthritis no longer picks at his bones.

I pause, take a deep breath, and force myself to start walking towards his pasture. Part of me hopes that I will arrive at the gate and see him. His head hell high, and he calls for me. But again, he is gone. I left him here. I walked away and didn’t say goodbye until it was too late. I pull out my phone and look down at the last picture I have of him in the snow. He seemed so happy. Perhaps he was happy because I hadn’t forgotten him.

Too many years, I had disappeared, only showing up for snowstorms to towel him off and place the heavyweight blanket of purple, pink, and blue on his back. He watched all those times as I froze in my red Carhart; how many times had he tried to hug me for warmth? He would stretch and secure his neck and head around my waist, pushing me closer to him. I think he was concerned that I didn’t have fur like he did. He gave me so much love, but I foolishly did not fully return the favor. Not in the way that most horse riders would.  I had left him, but when the snow fell, he knew I would always be back for him to place that warm blanket on his back. And when the snow finally released its death grip on the pasture, I would be back to take away the warm blanket that was always placed on with love — despite what people will say. I never hated him. That word— hatred — never crossed my mind when I thought of him. But I was too sick and too selfish to think of how to give him a better life. At the end of his life, he was a pasture pony, retired by force because his owner never came around in his final years of living.  

  But this picture was the first time I was able to come back and see him on my own. This picture signified my first step towards the progress of healing. He snorted happily and charged the gate when he heard me approach — but even then, I could see the painful way his joints locked up as he ran. This was the first and last time both of us were considered healthy. The pride he wore on his face knowing that this was the first time in a long time I’d had been able to come to see him. 

In this moment of time, snow and ice melted slightly in patches all around him were the only sign that winter was still here. Tiny buds of grass and flowers peeked through in strange sections as if they did not realize that winter was still upon them. In some ways, the melting of the cold represented the melting of pain and shame. But I was wrong thinking that the time would stand still for him, by the time I was able to free myself from my sickness, he — he was being murdered by his. Just like that winter, the melting of snow was false, and with it, a storm crashed down upon us.

***

That picture was taken just before spring came in. It was taken on a crisp January day on a stretch of the path that I grained him on. It was also his favorite place to graze. A few days before he died, I let him graze. He spent time plucking up the remainder of vegetation that the frost hadn’t gotten to.

I bent down and brushed my hand over where the ghost of his hoof prints once used to be.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered as I pick up turned-up earth and let the sand slide through my open fingers.

***

  I remember his final week with me. I remember begging my parents to let me ditch. They agreed because they knew I was getting ready to say goodbye to him. I sat in the dirt of the pasture and just watched him. The sun glared in his ebony mane as he flicked his head back and forth. Though his head was peppered with age and his eyebrows sunk lower into his head, he didn’t act old. He was young at heart. An immortal that never believed he could ever be done on this earth. I was foolish enough to believe it too. Though he could no longer walk, his belly never grew shallow with the lack of food.

He didn’t see the sadness in my eyes that day. He didn’t hear the words full of hate that continuously spat at my back.  He didn’t realize that hours before, animal control showed up at my house and accused me of neglect.

They looked me in the eyes and called me a cruel beast. Little did they know that every snowstorm, I was out there, toweling him off, and blanketing him. They didn’t know about the stretches that I did to try and temporarily fix the arthritis that soaked his joints.  They didn’t know the constant pain meds and senior grain that I fed him for him to get better.  Nor did they understand the dark sickness that swallowed me whole at every turn. They did not know any of this, and yet they accused me of a crime that I never dreamed of committing. They thought I had left him to rot in that pasture surrounded by his mate and court. I never hit Otis. Nor did I abuse him. And if I really wanted to abuse and neglect him, I would have kept him locked up in a seven-by-seven cell. Most importantly, I wasn’t the one who murdered him.

***

I know he died looking at me as the euthanasia serum took hold of his body and slowly stopped his heart. He looked so scared. If he could have talked, would he have yelled at me to hold him as his world turned black? In those final moments, I clung to my father. He must have thought it was my last middle finger to the relationship we had. I remember how the vet tech helped me cut pieces of his tail off. She harshly sawed just under his nub, sheathing him and taking away his dignity. She wanted to sheath his mane too. I saw the sick enjoyment in her eyes. I shook my head.

“Don’t you dare touch him!” I yelled and pushed her back. My sister tried to grab me as I ran to him. “I’m so sorry!” I remember how my hands felt his soft fur, and I closed his eyelids. I wanted to lay there next to him for a few more moments.

They ripped me away from him, saying that his herd needed to grieve for him.  The other horses in the herd, bowing before their fallen king. His mate whinnying for him to get up. She tried to get closer, to touch him one last time. The screaming of the rest of the herd still reverberates of my skull. They parted a path as the renderer dragged him by his legs and forced him into a truck where he could no longer see the sky. He used to love looking up at the sky and feeling the sun surround him.

  They dragged him away on a red truck, caked with mud and pasture dust, I never knew how many dead carcasses he was thrown on top of as if he was wasn’t someone’s pet just moments before. Was he alone? Did other corpses join him? What did they do to his body?

With a dog or a cat, the vet treats the animal with respect. They let the people mourn. They show respect in the animal’s death. Otis didn’t get that. He didn’t get that because he was treated like live-stock. He wasn’t treated like a pet.

  He was shot in the vein with pink liquid and forced to the ground by a vet and their vet tech who didn’t care. He was treated like a man on death row. No sympathy. No sadness in any of their eyes. No condolences. Just another Tuesday for them. Not for me. It was a Tuesday that I never wanted to happen.

***

I came to the end of my journey. The pasture is up ahead. All the horses, Voodoo, Lakota, Kallie, King: all of them — once Otis’ loyal court — look at me. Their ears are towards me. Their eyes light up as they recognize me. I open the pasture gate. Voodoo, approaches me first. He bows his head and snorts. Then he moves aside and lets Otis’ mate come towards me. She places her head on my shoulder — as if to say ‘I miss him too.’ Part of me thinks that they didn’t know that I would return on the anniversary of his death — or that I would return at all. Frankly, I didn’t think I would be here either. I didn’t want to — but something — maybe Otis, beckoned me here — perhaps he was telling me to no longer blame myself for his death.

 She pulls away and turns. She lets me place my hand on her withers. She guides me toward the mound of dirt that is sacred. Kallie pushes her ears back at two new horses who do not understand that a great king was viciously murdered here. They run away. I kneel and my place my hand on the mound. Otis’ court circles me as if in protection. They watch as I finally allow myself to weep over the mound of earth, where my horse took his last breath.