Somewhere, a mother runs her hands
over a shirt she can’t bear to wash.
The scent of leather and dust still clings,
as if memory alone could keep a body warm,
as if a ghost could be stitched into cotton.
Somewhere, a wife stands at the edge of a
doorway, one hand on the frame, the other
resting where he used to sleep. The bed is
still wide enough to fit a dream, but too
empty for comfort. They say every cowboy
has a girl somewhere, wringing a dish towel
dry, watching the clock like it owes her an
answer. A mother pacing the porch, a wife
pressing prayers into the bones of her hands,
waiting for the phone to stay silent—
or worse, for it to ring. Lane, they say you rode
like a man who had already whispered in God’s
ear, who had already seen the gates swing wide
and still tipped your hat to the crowd. They say
you loved like a man who knew the weight of
waiting women, who kissed the tops of hands
and promised to come back whole. But the bulls—
Lord, the bulls. They never knew the wreckage
they left behind, never saw the rosaries twisted tight
in palms, never saw the tears salt the rim of a coffee
cup, the long nights spent listening to wind as if it
might carry your voice home. How, their hooves carved
heartbreak into the dirt, how a man could be both
unstoppable and so fragile, how the strongest hands
could never hold him down. Tell me, Lane, does heaven
smell of sawdust? Do the bulls run softer there, or do they
still shake the sky with their fury? Does Red Rock wait
at the gate, his great head lowered in some kind of prayer,
some kind of knowing? Tell me, Lane— do the bulls in
heaven run gentler? Do they know now what they never
understood then? Do they bow their great heads in apology?
Somewhere, a mother still watches the sky like it might bring
you back. Somewhere, a wife still wakes up reaching. And
somewhere, you ride on, no fences, no fear, no falling, just a
two hand wave. Just the wind at your back, just the endless open.
Chloe Rodriguez was raised on humidity, Catholic guilt, and the knowledge that even palmetto bugs outlive love stories. She writes poems like they’re survival manuals for the emotionally unhinged. In Tallahassee now, she’s balancing being a serious poet in a PhD with her side career as a mosquito buffet. She is also deathly allergic to food coloring.