soft drink horse
Early on, not long after they’d
moved into the country, the boy’s
mother bought a horse. She’d
always wanted one, she said.
The horse had one milky eye.
The horse had one normal eye.
He was named after a soft drink,
and spent his days eating hay
in the old barn that had once
belonged to the farmstead
across the dirt road. A few
years later, the boy’s sister fell
through the floor on the second
story of that barn, her injuries
prevented by the soft drink horse’s
pile of hay on the floor below.
That horse is a dim memory now.
The boy isn’t sure what happened
to it, where it went, whether there
was a story attached to its absence.
A new family lives in the house.
They’ve stained the logs a darker color.
Even the barn is gone now.
Passersby don’t know to miss it.
/ / /
Jason Crane
2 April 2015
Oak Street
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