HOW TO TRIUMPH LIKE A GIRL
I like the lady horses best, how they make it all look easy, like running 40 miles per hour is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger, after winning.
Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest, I like that they’re ladies.
As if this big dangerous animal is also a part of me, that somewhere inside the delicate skin of my body, there pumps an 8-pound female horse heart, giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don’t you want to believe it?
Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see the huge beating genius machine that thinks, no, it knows, it’s going to come in first.

I decide, someday, to name a kid Levon, and you agree, and outside the dark traffic groans by on our curving country road making a sound like the slow roar of applause when the home team’s tide unexpectedly turns.

THE QUIET MACHINE
I’m learning so many different ways to be quiet. There’s how I stand in the lawn, that’s one way. There’s also how I stand in the field across from the street, that’s another way because I’m farther from people and therefore more likely to be alone. There’s how I don’t answer the phone, and how I sometimes like to lie down on the floor in the kitchen and pretend I’m not home when people knock. There’s daytime silent when I stare, and a nighttime silent when I do things. There’s shower silent and bath silent and California silent and Kentucky silent and car silent and then there’s the silence that comes back, a million times bigger than me, sneaks into my bones and wails and wails and wails until I can’t be quiet anymore. That’s how this machine works.