#before spring

It's still cool enough to let out a breath and see it rise. Still gray enough for the city to drape like an old woman. Miles away, a foal bellows

in a field by a misty overpass. She has stepped on a rattler, its fangs already deep in her ankle. Her eyes dilate, grow round as her new belly.

What the heart does next is cruel: how it lifts in panic, the quick livening of the body before it slackens. Her knees buckle, and grass swallows

her frame like lips on a flask. I thought it would be nice to leave the city, to see springtime break across the country. How unlike me—to confuse birth with

beauty: the flowers budding all red, the trees hard in the sun, the slumped shape of the foal breathing one, two, stop. Everything thaws in a slow hurt.