𝕃𝕠𝕠𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕒𝕥 𝕡𝕒𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕤 𝕓𝕪 𝕄𝕒𝕣𝕜 𝕄𝕒𝕘𝕘𝕚𝕠𝕣𝕚

And I am a cowboy. I am sitting upright in the saddle, my feet tense against hard stirrups. The smell of stale hay rises to my nostrils and I feel the blood of my horse and my own blood coursing through my veins. And I am upright in the desert – there are wild blooms around me dotted scratched into the ground and countless grit pebbles grinding under hoof. I am wearing my special hat, my Stetson, purchased last spring at the state fair and it is neat and suede upon my head. Like it is an emblem, like it is a signal of my trade. And I wear a tasseled shirt and the tassels sway with the movement of my horse and my horse is a good horse, a sweet horse, she is steady and ready and willing. And I don’t wear spurs, I don’t wear spurs because I think it cruel, even though the other cowboys jeer and cheer at me through glinting golden grins and wolfish smiles. I grin wolfishly back at them, leering, jeering too, because I am a cowboy and that is what I know. And I feel the buck and sway of my mare beneath me, fulsome like the hips of a woman. She and I are one, we are one smooth machine of muscle and power and singing together we ride. I crunch searching through the desert and I squint at the horizon and whistle through buck teeth to test my own mettle. I am whistling for no one, when I whistle like my mother taught me, like my brother showed me, like my father before me. I am riding along beneath a sky full of cumulus, it is a cyclone above me and I don’t quite understand it although I can read it, I can read the wind and the sky like I read my own callused palm. The great towering nimbus rises so high, so white and so dense, as if I could touch it, as if I could reach up to pluck it and pull it to my jaw. My jaw chews stalk and leaf and aches, aches with fury and work. I trot on. She trots on beneath me, trusting me, and my spurless heels dig into her broad, warm sides with a feeling of compassion, of simple truth, resentment and of care.

We rise and fall. I adjust my Stetson, I tug at my collar and shout, yeehaw, giddy, giddy, giddy with the smell of myself and of her mingled together in a dusty, dirty waterfall. I bite my lip and she bites hers, snorts and pulls back and I react smoothly, as naturally as I can, as if we are one and the discomfort is ours to share. We follow a trail, a rough, pockmarked creosote in the sand and her hooves crunch and my shoulders jolt back as I scan the horizon and I scan with my thighs and I feel everything in the ground as if it were my own two feet planted there. And we cut through swathes. We cut through bluegrass and cottontop, marigold and sagebrush and the crush of each leaf lets out a sigh, a scent of disbelief. The sky rolls above, rolling and roiling, broiling and I look up and I say giddy, giddy, find those damned cattle and be done with it. And the nimbus grows wider and ever taller and I am rushing now, rushing forward upon her, winding with my rope around and preparing to coil, to spring forth, to toss at the exact moment I am asked to. She feels steady beneath me, warm-blooded, warm-scented and my body curves forwards, curves over her neck, I smell the oil and sweat and musty tang of her mane and I cast out. I aim, a microsecond, a flick of my sharp wrist and send, swirling, hemp linen, thick, full grassy noose. And I bend over and whisper in her ear, good girl, my girl, that’s my girl.

Angel Jin lives in London, England. She is currently experiencing an obsession with westerns.