A Lifetime Ago

The barn becomes her home when she's just five years old. The smell of horse and hay in the stalls is more comforting than the cigarette smoke and black coffee in the farmhouse - it’s more natural, more welcoming. She doesn’t go to fancy art classes or ballet like the girls at school. She makes sculptures of mud in the rain and hops and leaps with the toads by the pond. She wears dirt like a crown and fly spray for perfume. She catches lightning bugs in jars and counts stars on her back in the soft grass. The horses are dangerous and lovely, warm and soft, off-limits, and all that she wants to be around. When she’s just five years old, the barn is home and the wise old barn owl watches over her.

The barn becomes her safe haven when she’s twelve years old. Her hair is curly and big, awful, compared to the girls at school with their slick styles and long locks. The horses don’t care that her body somehow turned from child to adult overnight and her clothes don’t fit right. Barn cats don’t wonder why she is darker than her family, why she has no money for the newest clothes. There’s no one making fun or being cruel, just soft sighs and buzzing box fans. There are riding lessons to be had and chores to be done. There is peace and fun and love. When she’s twelve years old, the barn is a safe haven, and the wise old barn owl watches over her.

The barn becomes her anchor when she’s seventeen years old. She’s given freedom in the form of four wheels and a license. She runs wild and herself ragged- drinking and dancing and doing anything that seems rebellious enough. Her friends float untethered, into rehabs and car accidents and babies too young. But she’s tied to the horses who need her and a family business that demands her time. She stays out late but still rises with the sun. Her feet ache from too-tall heels and her fingers sting from pitchfork-rubbed blisters. When she’s seventeen years old, the barn is an anchor, and the wise old barn owl watches over her.

The barn becomes her prison when she’s twenty years old. There are long nights and early mornings and long days between. The responsibilities move from ten hands to five to only her own. There are children to keep safe and horses to feed, bandages to wrap, and bills to pay. Outside the barn, people are making choices and moving away, picking schools, and packing bags. Inside the barn, there is no choice. There are frozen buckets and passing opportunities. There are boys who demand more of her time, who leave when she can’t give it. When she’s twenty years old, the barn is a prison, and the wise old barn owl watches over her.

The barn becomes her ghost when she’s thirty years old. The stalls sit empty, the saddles covered in a blanket of dust. The bills are piled high, long since marked in red. The horses are gone, the children are too. Only the quiet remains but it carries no peace. There’s only nostalgia and longing for even the days when the barn was a prison. Longing for any time but this one - sad and alone. Funerals are had and the big blue farmhouse is suddenly empty too. There’s nothing left to do but shut the doors and walk away. When she’s thirty years old, the barn is her ghost, and the wise old barn owl finally flies away.