Horse Dreams and Night Mares
Vali Hawkins-Mitchell
On a choked-sky afternoon of the wildfire, I saw escaped horses stampeding and, employing my hoodie as a lasso, I caught a terrified black stallion panic-running down the middle of the highway. He would never know that I had horse phobia. My mother’s equinophobic rantings had done their work with her never-ending terminal-horse-hoofs-of-doom predictions:
“Horses are always just on the verge of violently killing some innocent bystander, often breaking loose at a parade, by kicking them in the head.”
That night, I dreamed I was underwater with eight multicolored horses. Their powerful legs pumped, and their bodies collided in the chaotic ocean. They melted into a watercolor blur, threatening to trample and drown me in their wild stampede.
A few weeks later, my friend, Chris, a legitimate critter-whisperer, kindly offered to take me horseback riding. She knew I was afraid.
On the appointed day, I arrived at the stables and found Chris on her back underneath a large chocolate brown mare. With blood-soaked blonde hair stuck to her forehead wearing a mud-caked pink bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, I naturally assumed she had been violently kicked in the head.
“Misty spooked and jumped her corral and ripped open her leg on the metal. She’ll bleed out. I need to call the vet. Get under here and put pressure on it. She has to stay standing!” she yelled.
I dug deep and crawled under Misty’s massive homicidal body. I clenched the gash on her front leg and held tight. Soon, she was covered in sweat, and I was covered in blood. Neither of us moved. It got quiet and dream-like. I felt myself drifting, and my breath paced with Misty’s like a shared mantra.
I glanced up at her soft belly, and it became the ceiling of a temple. Life and Death were taking their measure of the situation as we morphed into a blur of vulnerability and trust, both of us wanting to stay alive. Not only did Misty have lethal hooves, but her body would crush me if she fell. And if I let go of the wound, she could die. Like in my dream—part mystical and holy, part bizarre and nightmarish—I was in some familiar liminal space between worlds. I remembered nearly drowning, slipping away, while surrounded by people who didn’t see me going under.
“I’m here. I see you. I won’t let go,” I spoke to the horse.
Holding tight to the drenched rag that was once Chris’s bathrobe, my hands burning from fatigue, back aching, we shared a deep sigh.
In my dreams that night, an old white horse leaned over a rusted barbed wire to take greens from my hand. Nostrils flaring, chin whiskered, smelling of sweat and earth, he was indifferent to our differences and nudged me with his soft grey nose. Like a saint still employed past death, the white horse blessed me free of fear that had never been mine to begin with.
Dr. Vali Hawkins-Mitchell works and writes from her office across the street from the Honolulu Zoo, where she works as a Trauma and Disaster responder for the company she co-owns, Employee Assistance of the Pacific. Her books, poetry, essays, non-fiction, and fiction have been published in numerous literary journals, such as Sky Island Journal, Star82Review, Blink-ink, Spank the Carp, and StickfigurePoetry. She has published multiple trade journal articles on Disaster Recovery and has published books on the topic of Emotional Terrorism and Bullying in the Workplace. (Rothstein and Associates) More of her writing can be found at www.valihawkinsmitchell.com and www.eapacific.com. When not writing, she searches for beach glass with her husband and their elderly dachshund.