Mr. Mr.

That whole summer she slept with her windows open just in case. Just in case the fit went on for a while, and she’d have to get up and walk the old and lanky horse out of the corral and up the road in her nightgown, with a puffy coat, the moon the only light washing everything blue, like a thin milk brushed atop a crust — the horse, the road cut through the crowding thickets. Her.

Mer walked along the bottom of the valley in her chore boots, her bare feet gripping the thin, chewed up insoles that bunched under her toes as she and the horse walked in step. The hem of her nightgown moving at her knees, the swishing of the horse’s tail, small whispers of a wind in the still night. There was nakedness, a pureness to the routine. A privacy between two animals walking side by side in the middle of the night.