Ride

I lay, skin grey with shock and pain. Trapped
far too close to a macabre scene, I screamed.
This was not part of my dream, my life of
blue and red ribbons. They clambered around me,
fingers testing, pulling, breaking me free. Wrenching me upwards,
my very bones shrieking. But I stood,

my small battered brown boots blackening slowly,
the suede splattered. My mother had laid my crisp
white shirt on the chair by the bed this morning.
It smelt fresh and clean like apples, not sickly sweet,
not like most mornings. It sat perfectly straight,
lines still sharp and stiff, but it wept;
fat blossoms trailing downwards.

I fell to my knees, like I would every Sunday
in the back pew. My tongue was heavy and thick,
and I remember the faint taste of copper on my lips
before I lost all composure.

I stood a week ago in the twin of that shirt, it smelt
sickly sweet, and never before have I been so thankful.
My boots where shiny black; I can’t wear brown any more.
But as I stood there, accepting faultless absolution of my deed
from broken smiles, I felt the sticky scarlet stains seep
forth from my skin, painting me with sin I can’t wash away.

They pulled my feet from the stirrups,
and I was never the same.