The Mare

Ginger

We drove at night, but she didn’t talk and she frowned at my music, like it was distracting her from disappearing into her music — this goopy Spanish stuff, all love songs except for one with snarling dogs and gunfire and guys yelling “Ronca!” That song was the best, all threat and flash in the dark, but when I told her I liked it, she just stared straight ahead, and I remembered her friend who died.

Something else was different too. She stopped leaning against me when we sat to watch TV. When I put my arm around her, she went still under my touch. I thought she was rejecting me, then I realized it was worse: She had lost her trust in touch. Not just my touch, all touch. I still touched her, out of habit; my hand on her back, her arm, her forehead when I said good-night. She stayed remote. Someone had made touch into something else for her and I could not change it back.