Cowgirl

The cowgirl emerges, stands before me. Even at the lowest moment she can appear. She lights her cigarette and plays a Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds record, maybe Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits, a woodpecker kind of tune. She knocks her boots and doesn't apologize for the dirt that falls on the carpet. She licks her lips and grins. She strides, her boots were made for walking. This cowgirl cuts no slack. She'll do it, just because she can, especially if she shouldn't. She never second guesses, her shot is as sure as the sun, sure as the swing of a short skirt, sure as the gasp for breath that follows urging desire. She always, always shoots from the hip.

She strides into the room and my defenses falter. I am as certain as I have ever been that it is time to stay and sit a while, that I'm tired and want to sit down. Time to hang up my spurs, play it safe. Fly under the radar. And then my door swings open and there she stands, hips cocked to one side, head cocked to the other. Her skin is tan and smells like salt and sun, her face fresh with wind, her hair a hot mess. Her entire body is wind blown, she's grinning from ear to year, she's shaking her head at me.

What in the hell is wrong with you, she laughs. She strikes a match and I notice that her cigarettes will make the curtain smell. She is at home, everywhere. She moves freely, and worst best of all, she never takes no for an answer.

Wondering, wondering about the life of the cowgirl, how she makes herself at home in me. Chasing away complacency, dispelling restlessness, bound to movement, dancing. Restlessness of the sky, the natural state of being, motion like standing still. Horizon calling, sky responding, the echo of my room, my fingers, hopeless to the lilting dance.

We saddle up and before I know it I am going, going, gone. Always hearing the beckoning, whether I heed the call or not. No shape, no color, no smell or taste or sound, pulling, yearning, longing. The cowgirl laughs at me because she knows the name of that nameless beast, that mystery. The nameless is her home on the range.

She rides, and it moves her in ways I have not yet dreamed. She grits her teeth and rides hard, enjoys every saltysweet moment, borne in the sweat of her smile, the dirt under her fingernails, the soft pale glow of her thigh exposed willingly to the moonlit sky. She looks at me that way, and I'm lost. There is no defense of culture or tradition I can muster that will crack that crooked smile, that shit-eating grin. My intellectual excuses are a pale, soggy grey next to her vibrant colorful arguments.

I can't do this, I can't go with you, I have work to do I mumble, and she spits on the ground.

Who can't do this, she asks me. Where is your will? There is nothing that cannot be done, you just need to grow a pair. She smiles warmly, takes a drag off her cigarette.

Or, you could borrow mine, she grins. You know all of this, I've told you before, she says. Now, what are you afraid of?

What indeed? She pitches her cigarette, glowing cherry arcing through the darkness, a comet of nicotine exploding into sparks. Burns me, leaves deft impressions, nomad nature deeply imbued in limbs. Fingers tingle, nameless tangles, drawing me out further and further, toward the horizon.

I ride the range, take a turn in the saddle.

Spend long enough out here and you'll never go back, she prods, and rocking the creaking oiled leather I finger the reins like a string of beads. The sun dips behind the hill, the sky raises her skirts and the periwinkle dusk of her petticoats flirts with deep blue night. We ride in silence, and stars wink into appearance. I feel the deep sigh of the earth settling into sleep, and I know that she's right.

I don't speak, and we stop in the heart of the emptiness. It is big, it is flat, and and it is expanding. The wind slips as silk across skin. Dust presses into my clothes, unnameable osmosis, thick in these parts. She is smiling, grin like the moon, beautiful and awful, mysterious and obvious and terrible all at the same time. Silence, a consummate host.Because, she says, voice of honey and certainty. Because every so often, you need to see what you look like