She struggles through a water-slick crevice, emerges

in another cave. I wake. But she continues, deeper into

 

the dream, runs her hands across stone, blind, inside

earth’s belly, waits for the creature at the end of her

 

fingers to move with her touch, begin to stir, feeling

how the darkness moves, speaks. She lights a torch,

 

gives the creature eyes, sees how it stares back at her,

recognizing itself. She mixes crushed limestone and fat;

 

haematite and sap. She spits into the paint, mixes herself

into the color, begins the arc of the horse’s head, paints

 

the eyes, the moment when the colt broke from the herd,

moved towards her, mapped her curiosity and fear by

 

smell, and entered this dream, each hair on its body an

antenna, sensitive to the shift of starlight. Charcoal

 

blackens her fingers, and she looks into the horse’s eyes,

alive inside her, looking back at her, returning her to leaf,

 

ravine, water, blood, the living, the dead.