last night I rode bareback during a lightning storm in the pitchblack summer winds and I felt alive

The sky is black but the clouds are rolling in gray waves over the west, and the flash white-blue of lightning streaks behind them like a sin. I can't help but smile in this moment, and this is everything. Florida summers feel like torture, the way the afternoons melt by, honey in the sunshine. The way the mornings disappear in a heat haze of barely opened eyes and blankets kicked off and sweat behind your knees. But the summer nights in Florida are something else entirely...

The way the breeze blows through your hair, you feel naked. It's a warm breeze and that changes everything. And Florida is so flat, you can see everything, the way I can see the lightning in the distance like it's a picture-book held under my nose, it's that close.

My hand traces down your mane, braided tight and black against my favorite shade of copper brown. No saddle tonight, just your skin, that perfect coat, against my cheap jeans. It feels like we're together, now, the way we were together when the judges decided we were the best in the nation in your specialty. I remember the announcer, remember the way I fell onto your neck, because gravity was nonexistent and the sense had left the world and oh my god, it was just you and me and we did something impossible.

We made a dream come true. My dream. Our dream, maybe. But maybe I've had it wrong this whole time, my little sparrow. Are you a Jinn, perhaps? Hiding your flaming eyes somehow? How else have you given me dream after dream, with so little in return?

So last night, let's call this an abstract dream, let's call this being alive. Because that's how I felt, my lungs actually moving and my heart beating, wet and strong and this. is. everything. And sometimes I forget that I've taken riding lessons for years, and I forget that you're by far the most well-trained horse I've ever ridden, and I realize that if I just let go, we're fine. We move without thinking and we agree on everything and there is nothing better than being with you. Nothing.