The Hanging Field by Stephanie Bryant Anderson

Originally posted on The Blue Hour:

Though we never stopped, we stared
from the backseat of our car—

our flat-bottom boat—at the body darting
from the end of a rope. I remember the road,

its lines, yellow and broken, the crowd
and a cloud shaped like a hare.

Now the field comes back into view:

I’ve dreamt a horse into the field, or the horse
in my dream came to save me—not

some knight—but the horse,
and I climbed onto his back to keep from

suffocating. But it was more than that—
I was trying...