Girls with Insurance

The horns sound and we spook in lockstep. I’ve never known what the recorded trumpeting noise is meant to represent, but believe me, it’s the classiest thing that happens all day.  A dollop of regalness atop our Coors Light and overcooked hamburgers. When everyone else stands, we stand, like hungover Catholics in mass, en masse, ennui. Joi de vivre.

I have a skirt for the track. A big pocket for ready cash, a smaller one for the next race’s tickets, and a very, very small one for winning tickets. My pocket for won cash is empty, yet and often.

It’s the 9th, and the 22 to 1 long shot that my 7-year-old son bet on twice busted early through the gate and then threw her rider.

I used to own a car too once. I used to be what allegedly they call a Human Being. That didn’t last too long. I had a woman, sort of. I’d crawl in with my mind full—packed to the corners—with the image of this enormous wild rose bush growing like a wild very still quiet geyser of roses out of the dirt beside the house where we rented a railroaded apartment with creaking floors and beautiful French doors boarded up to make a wall. I’d climb into bed with my head stuffed with the image of these roses buried in snow, the snow shining in the headlights. I’d sit in the parked car, full of pride, happy as a tick in a fat girl’s rump. I’d sit in there and cry and listen to Arvo Pärt and drink gin out of a jar and when I’d go in, my head would be stuffed with the image of these ragged roses buried in snow, the snow shining in the headlights of the parked car. I’d go in and crawl in and she was there! I could feel her. She was in there with me and my head was so stuffed I could do nothing but feel. My brain was occupied, understand, with roses, so all I had left was my skin to reach out and decipher—like radar caressing the skin of the ocean. She was in there with me. That was when I was a Human Being.

I am writing as if something sad

that hasn’t happened yet, & might not happen

at all, has already happened because I want

to memorialize this potential-for-sadness

& if I wait, Life will either rob me of this

by delivering some kind of joy