The Sunset Ones - Leslie Cairns

I grew up near horses, I said. The cars would stand toe to toe, yelling even, for parking spaces. You can’t be serious, she said. I thought of well oiled machines, and the horses sweaty, trotting, steady. The opposite of me. Now, I’m in jeans, frayed collarbones, and an opened white blouse.

Then, we’d be in pastels, paper-thin dresses from boutiques, heels that caged and dared to trip us.

Here, though, the water laps the shore, the mountains nay and brinny in their own way. I swear, my town was obsessive about racing, I said.

What an inhumane thing to do, race hearts in such a way, she said. I pretended her words didn’t matter, I quipped back, Of course. I got away.

The names we’d write on paper as old as our laugh lines, the palms on our hands waiting to be read.

The tiny pencil stubs, the hats bobby pinned to the side of our heads. I cared, then, for winning.

Holding onto luck, and chasing it to the beginning.

She couldn’t know.

What a senseless thing, I said. Wanting to pucker my lips, spin faster and win closer, but knew that she would never take me in that way. Her trophy was her work, embroiled in the numbers pinned at her desk. That’s how we got these margaritas: blushing, wilting, red-rosy orange and pink.

These are the sunset ones, she said. Demurring. They stain–

Our lips, she clarified.

I sip, thinking of the model horses, pinned onto the ferris wheel with spokes and stakes, that must be churning. I’d lost the thread of the argument, the circle of our creation.

Those horses on the wheel, forever spinning in a circle. Performing in the middle of a scorched earth, man-made park–

Even right now, from states away, at the small town filled with racing. Tourist attractions, people coming from all over, to see the horses play and whinny. To see how they can get someone to bet on them, and maybe even get stained

Into wealth, or find something turned pretty.

Originally published by Diphthong Lit 2022

Leslie Cairns (She/her): Leslie Cairns holds an MA degree in English Rhetoric. She lives in Denver, Colorado. She is a Pushcart Prize Nomination for 2022 in the Short Story category ('Owl, Lunar, Twig'). She was an honorable mention in Flash 405's call in Exposition Review (2022). Leslie has upcoming flash, short stories, and poetry in various magazines (Unconventional Courier, Tropico Line, Londemere Lit, and others). Twitter: starbucksgirly