She Raises Her Head

I’ve never met anyone who wonders as much as Daisy. She has these big eyes, dark, you could stare into them and only see yourself. And I think that anyone who looks at her can see it, that her entire soul lives right there in her eyes. Nobody can wonder like Daisy. That’s why I spend my time imagining. Daisy’s never told me for certain what she wonders about, but I have some ideas. I imagine that if she could tell me she would. I imagine that I’d answer her questions for her, if she knew how to ask them. Instead she stares at me, dark eyes, the world welling up in the corners.

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I imagine that Daisy wonders about her name (I love to imagine how she feels, how she sees the world through her gentle brown eyes, how she thinks. I imagine that she thinks in full sentences just like you and me, but maybe she really thinks in pictures. Or songs. She’s got a beautiful voice, too, that’s something really special about her). She doesn’t know what the name Daisy means and she wonders why she’s called Daisy, this word that means nothing to her besides the way that it sounds. She only knows it’s her name because of the way she hears it, the way people come up to her with low, safe voices, cooing “Hello, Daisy” as they scratch her forehead. She doesn’t know she was named after the owers that crop up in her pasture, because she doesn’t know what those owers are called, just how they taste – a little bitter, but she’s not picky.

 

Daisy wonders about the hands that feed her, that come and brush and stroke her, that poke and prod her as if she’s not a real thing too. There are hands that reach around her head, fumbling with the buckle on her nylon halter, clipping a lead rope underneath her chin to show her someplace new. And hands that grab her velveted nose, firmly yet carefully, and that gently shake her head around – she knows this to be an act of love, because she loves it. There are smaller hands that trace shapes on her legs and sides, moving back up to her haunches and around and around her body, again and again, drawing curves and corners, and she can’t imagine what they must mean (she doesn’t know the curves and corners are all hers, starkly black and white, splotches in her coat as if she was painted that way).

 

There are other hands that she doesn’t meet frequently, that are less kind. Hands with syringes in them, sharp ends that everyone assumes she can’t feel because of her size. Hands with thin plastic gloves that push her around, that reach inside of her, that funnel paste down her throat. She knows that whoever lets these things happen to her must hate her.

 

She can’t figure out who is responsible though. She has a hard time seeing hands and faces together, and everyone uses the same gentle voice, a chorus of bass and oboe and cello all playing to her: Gentle, Daisy. Woah, Daisy. She sings out in response. She raises her head up as high as she can and returns their low calls with one of her own, but they can’t understand what she’s saying. She wonders about how fast she could run. She tries to test it, sometimes, when the weather is morning-cool and the fog hasn’t burnt off yet and she knows she can breathe easy. She takes off from one end of her pasture, starting in a gentle lope that grows into a thundering, drumming gallop. She turns on a dime when she needs to, avoiding her fence and beginning her laps around the field, crushing small white flowers in her wake.

 

Daisy wonders about how her fence is able to make music like that. The air around it is high-pitched, humming, she can feel it inside of her ears more than she can hear it. And the closer she gets to it the more she can feel it, like the humming is inside of her now. The rows of wires vibrate like a violin, like someone slicing their bow over taut strings back and forth, over and over, like a scream from all around her. She doesn’t like to get too close. She doesn’t want to touch her fence. She wonders if anyone else can hear it too.

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Sometimes hands come in with a conductor’s baton, singing in concentrated whispers the song of her fence. Daisy lets herself be conducted. She’s felt the song in her bones before, sharp and quick, turning her into an instrument herself. She kicked her feet out when the baton made contact, just enough to propel herself forward. She doesn’t want to be played like an instrument. She wants to sing.

 

Daisy wonders where her son went. She hasn’t seen him in a while. I imagine that Daisy wonders about things that we don’t even have the ability to imagine, or that I don’t have the ability to. I imagine that Daisy wonders a bit about gravity (I certainly do, it never made complete sense to me, not in school, at least), how it weighs her down so extremely but how she can kick it off whenever she so pleases. I see her in the morning sometimes, kickin’ around, she floats, I swear. I guess that’s why I asked, because if you knew about wondering you might really understand her. You should give it a try. Look into her eyes, see what you can hear.