Last year the horses froze to death during a winter like this: long, drawn out like a wire that attaches one electrical post to another, low and swinging and eternal. Mama stayed indoors with the cough, cradled it inside her chest like a child. In March, we dug through packed snow. They were six hard bodies, smooth and sinewy, frost collecting in eyelids and nostrils. Jelly was pregnant, expecting a foal in the spring. Her belly was swollen, hard as stone.
Cold Truth by Christine Marella
From the Honorable Mentions series
- Christine Marella, Monterey
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