for Paula
We were seventeen.
You fell from a horse,
spent a week in a coma.
When I tell the story,
those are the facts,
the hard true things
I know with certainty
after more than forty years.
Sometimes when I tell the story,
the horse threw you
when he got spooked;
sometimes you leaned down
to adjust the stirrup
and slipped off.
You were on a road and fell
face first to the pavement,
or you were in a field and your head
hit a big jagged rock.
You were with another friend
or your step-sister
the horse ran off
or stayed and nudged you
the horse was a Palomino
he was an Arabian
your beautiful cornsilk hair
was in a ponytail
your beautiful cornsilk hair
was hanging loose
you wore a crimson t-shirt
you wore a pink paisley halter
you wore cutoffs
you wore jeans
you gasped
you tumbled silently
How would I know?
I wasn’t there. The details
came to me secondhand.
This is my story to tell now;
the details I provide
don’t matter because
no matter the details you died.
Daun Daemon has published poems and stories in numerous journals, including Delmarva Review, Dead Mule School, Third Wednesday, Typehouse Literary Review, Deep South Magazine, Into the Void, and Amsterdam Quarterly. Her memoir in poetry, A Prayer for Forgiving My Parents, was published in July (Kelsay Books). Daemon teaches scientific communication at North Carolina State University and lives in Raleigh with her husband and three cats.