She Stood on Hoofs
It was fate that she be brought there,
to the arms of saddleless cowboys.
Destined to kick the dryness of buried wheat,
not synthetic sand.
To bite an older gentlemen’s orange when he looked away,
not jockeyed to the disappointment of stables.
She felt small
and rejected, when hands quivered to touch her mane.
Her nostrils spouted with ease and spoke of disapproval
Swiftness was not of her concern
She moved close and far with a stumbling grace that frightened even herself.
Trotted when trotting was needed
Tousled her tangles
Tripped over tumbleweeds
Rejoiced she wasn’t choked by a muzzle
And owned by a bill
But the reality
of still being owned,
sweat through her coat on the coldest days.
Her eyes whispered defeat while she danced.
She stood on hoofs that weren’t meant to bear the despair of being liberated.
Jocelyn Hernandez grew up in northern California. To her traditional Mexican parent’s disappointment, she moved 2 hours away to San Francisco where she spends the weekdays doing tech marketing in the nonprofit space.