Margaret Gray is a second year UCSB student majoring in Writing and Literature.
Ode to the Longhorns
By Margaret Gray
You are seventeen. You do
not move for eight months.
All this time those days
have been burning
in your head
head surer
than anything.
Then, finally!
Closure of the wound.
You are nineteen
curled up on the bus
the hills are holding you
calmly, the longhorns
are grazing in the same
patch as usual.
Life is immediate.
Your insides are outside.
Familiar agonies are
slowly unworking themselves,
your hold on the ancient urge
towards beautiful unraveling is
finally coming undone.
Maybe beauty is kinder than
that: don’t neuter yourself.
The raw hum of sensation
burns debris from the
surface of your body.