The Mare

Silvia

The lord is my shepherd / I shall not want. Today a man went into a movie theater with guns and started shooting. He killed five people and hurt lots of others, and I understand. Because I am tired of being the one in pain. It says I shall not want. But I want; I want somebody else to feel pain. I want to hear them screaming.

What I don’t want is prayer. I hate prayer. It’s what people do when they have nothing. I have never had anything and now I don’t even have a job. I am on the crowded subway but I am alone in darkness. I want to send bullets into the darkness, send knives. They won’t strike anyone because in the dark no one is there. And I am praying. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. I see Velvet’s horses, running in the grass. They are beautiful; my children smile and reach for them, thinking they can have them — their smiles, their hope destined to go black and die. Tears come up under my closed lids. He leads me beside the still waters. Last week I hurt Dante by crying in front of him — better for him if I’d given him my fist. He restores my soul. The horses run again, swerving together. I open my eyes. Across from me there’s an old woman with a sad face. In her body she carries a small flame. I look around; all the people on the car, no matter how rough, have a flame. I want to be like them. But I can’t. I am locked inside hardness and nothingness and I can’t get out. Like the horse Velvet talks about, the one who kicks the wall. Striking the hard thing, trying to break it. No one sees, no one hears. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for—.

But I fear. I fear. I am ill with fear.