ARABIAN WHITE

I AM, Arabian white.

I have seen myself in still water. I know what I AM.

I know what this should do to a world that has eyes, and they have eyes.

EVERYTHING out here has eyes.

The sparrows, dogs, needles, potatoes, the other horses down the fence line, EVERYTHING SEES EVERYTHING —

Except me.

I AM, the LOUDEST COLOR THAT EXISTS AND I AM INVISIBLE INSIDE IT and myself.

I cannot make that make sense.

I have tried. I have stood at this fence and I have tried to make that make sense for so long, that the trying is just part of me now. Just something that runs underneath everything else, the engine for some, inportant giant ship that nobody is on.

How are you not seeing me.

How?

I AM, white. I AM, so white I have seen myself stop my own breath in still water. I AM, the kind of white that should make everything else in a field distracted and feel suddenly dull by comparison.

I AM, not hiding.

I AM, not small.

I AM, not the color of DIRT, GRASS, TREES, OR SKY.

I AM STANDING RIGHT HERE AND I AM BLAZING,

and not one thing in this world turns its head.

I run and nobody startles. I breathe and nothing shifts. I have stood in the middle of this field in full sun white, as a struck match blinding white, when you close your eyes after staring at something bright, and the world just...

Without me in it.

I AM, not enough and I don't know how to be any more than I AM. I have nothing left to be. I AM, already everything and it is already not working and SOME days that sits in me like a stone and SOME days it sits in me like a scream and SOME days, it just sits. Just. Just me and the field. and the sparrows who don't flinch, and the dirt that doesn't shift, and grass that doesn't bend, and the trees that don't wave, and the sky that doesn't fade, and the fence, and the road, and the waiting...

Me in it.

AND THEN, one morning she comes down the road and something happens that has never happened before in my entire life and it may not be happening now...

She, stops.

Stops.

She stops walking and she looks at me and her whole body changes. Changes like when it's reality shifts because of something it didn't see coming.

Something ENORMOUS and real, and her hair crosses her face, and her hand goes to her mouth, and her dress shifts from the wind, and her eyes go wide and she does...

She sees me.

She sees, ME.

I doan move. I doan breathe. I can't. I am terrified that if I move she will stop, that whatever THIS is will close like a door and

I WILL BE BACK ALONE INSIDE ALL THIS WHITE with nowhere, to put it —

She walks,

Walks to the fence.

She...

She puts her hand out.

I can not stop from crossing the field to find out.

If it's me.

Is it me?