Maeve Birch Home

You ask how the horses are. I tell you they’re fine. I brushed Spruce. I was able to stand next to Red today. I speak in terns of progress. Activity.

I haven’t told you how peaceful it felt as the cuddly one kept nodding asleep with his nose pressed into my jacket. I haven’t told you there’s a time of day when they drink sunlight like the air itself, lying in the field spread-eagled, rubbing their faces in the dirt with such joy I can’t help but laugh. You don’t know that when I spend hours out there in the cold, I’m watching them spar over the fences. Ten points for the little brown pony who came away with a piece of fly mask in his mouth. He’s dancing through the field with his prize.  

These are all someone else’s horses. Someone else rides them. Someone else frets over their feed and their vet bills, their ability to jump over fences the right height. I had no introduction to them other than their own, so I know them only by what they told me. This one is stressed a lot. This one has only ever had good things from humans. This one has lost his ability to trust them.

They teach me how to be free. Even Red, who has lost his freedom somehow through humans, is more free in his expression and being than I can ever allow myself to be in the everyday. I can’t run laughing through the hallways of my workplace. I can’t throw myself to the ground in the middle of the park, flailing my limbs in the sunlight. Humanity has me bound tight. How does anyone live without their field full of horses?

-Maeve Birch, Winter 2018

My paperback has increased in price in order to begin making some amount back instead of operating at a loss. I so appreciate you all for being here through my book’s birth and early phases. The eBook remains the same price through both Amazon and SmashWords! Please support this work through giving a review, liking posts, or sharing the book or blog posts with friends and fellow horse lovers. You all mean so much. Thank you.