11/11 (Make a Wish)

Barn Brat Sestina

She talked to me and I talked back –
it wasn’t the words so much as the sounds.
Barns are friendlier with people inside,
and horses like to hear you speak,
poking their heads over the doors of stalls.
They never answered, not so we could understand.

She was always saying, I don’t understand,
why can’t I do the chores another way? I’d say, Back
when I was a kid, younger than you, I learned that stalls
get clean quicker if you – and I know how nuts this sounds –
throw each scoop against the wall. A pause. When she’d speak
her voice would betray her, trembling, holding a laugh inside.

We did as many chores as we could inside,
especially in the winter. It didn’t matter, understand,
how heavily we dressed – New England gets cold; to speak
meant letting in the air to freeze the very back
of our throats. And the chill made all sounds
tinny, made us envy our horses the warmth of their stalls.

When it got warmer, we did each of the four stalls
together, the two of us crammed tightly inside,
wielding pitchforks, giggling underneath the sounds
of wet shavings against the barrow. Now I understand
that doing it this way took twice as long, but working back
to back brings you so much closer, lets you speak

of things you might not otherwise. I for one speak
easier to empty air than to people, without stalls
or hesitation. And keep in mind that this was back
before we’d told our secrets. They were still inside.
Neither of us expected the other to understand –
we feared the words, the truth behind the sounds.

I loved doing chores with her, the gurgled sounds
of water running into buckets, how she’d speak
to our attentive horses like they could understand.
We knew exactly how long it took to do the stalls,
told our mothers it took more, then stayed inside
to gossip, standing against the wall and leaning back.

…these days when I go back to college, Meg calls me from the barn. It always sounds
like she’s inside, doing chores one-handed. Come home, she says before I speak.
I don’t like doing stalls alone. And I can’t do anything but say, I understand.