Auction House

There was once a girl who
decided that to write a story
she must first find something to tell.
What could she write since there was nothing
extraordinary about her?

There was once a horse who found her human
that human didn't want that horse.
It was love, yes love,
that was the truest love
the girl had ever known.

You see, this girl was used to pushing on despite
some very unfortunate events in her life.
She was a survivor, you might say.
This girl had seen her father die by his own hand
and her mother drink herself into
a stupor that fried almost all of her brain cells.

I am not this girl
but rather I could have been
as I could have been any number of other girls.
Like this girl I know what it is to press on
when the "odds" are stacked against you.

The horse that found this girl was a big black mare
who had a history of attacking people.
The girl was at an auction,
yes, the kind of auction where horses are sold as cattle are
and these horses end up on some one's dining room table.

The girl was there because she'd just lost her partner in crime-
a flea-bitten pony
that could unlatch the most elaborate stall door locking system.

The girl's friend conned her into going to the auction by saying
"Let's go see a movie".
He was like a brother to her,
and his mother was her true mother.

They walked down the line of sad looking horses and there was a holler
as a big black horse spun to kick at one of the auction workers.
The auction worker let out a curse and then there was the crack
of a whip on horseflesh.

The girl opened her mouth and prepared to scream
at the man who grinned
as blood welled up on the horse's flank.
Her friend put his hand on her arm and said
"No sense in getting on their bad side."

He pulled her away from that stall with the big black horse
and they went back to the ring
where the unfortunate horses would find their fate.

She sat beside her friend and
watched as horse after horse
was saved from the clutches of the meat buyers.

Then the horses that no one wanted started coming through.
They were the old Amish horses and broken down thoroughbreds
that could barely stand on their own.
They were also the backyard bred horses that got too dangerous
for their uneducated owners
and she watched as the meat buyers
bought them all.

Then the big black horse with four white stockings came into the ring
and everyone seemed to shy away from that horse's hooves.
The auctioneer said she was a mare with great bloodlines
and he had the authentic registration papers to prove it.

The tale of this horse was that she was sent away for training
and instead of being trained she learned that humans were evil.

The horse's neck was one tight muscle and she was
a dragon from an old fairy tale.
She even exhaled twin streams of steam
as she looked down on all the humans.

The horse's eyes met the girl's.
Without knowing why the girl raised her number
and without a counter bid

She bought the horse for $200 dollars.

Her friend shook her shoulder and began the tirade of
"What are you doing?"
"Too late now! She's bought her." said a stranger near them.

The fire breathing horse watched as the girl got up.
No one went near the horse as it walked slowly
up to the fence around the ring.
The girl stood on the other side and breathed out slowly.
The horse breathed in her scent and then exhaled.

A bond forged.