There’s this girl sitting on the bull gate again, legs swinging against the lower rungs, bouncing bare feet off the plastic green paint that’ll never chip. Her face. We swear, there’s just something about it. She’s our mother’s, sister’s, grandmother’s, aunt’s, cousin’s, childhood best friend’s, first grade teacher’s faces all folded into one. Smashed flat into youth again, she looks naïve. It’s sweet.
But that sweetness is as brief as a camera flash capturing her. We lean to the side and see all at once how brief this moment is.
Behind her is a bull, the only head in the field, alone, scared, furious he feels that way, confused why he can’t stop it. He hasn’t ever been told, but with the way every man, woman, child, dog, cat, deer that’s ever seen him has cowered, he knows he’s supposed to be mad, dangerous. He doesn’t want to be. God, he doesn’t want to be, he just wants to be safe. Safe means alone. Alone means fighting. Alone means making that girl as scared as he is.
We could paint him the villain here. That wouldn’t be right. Nature is cruel, violent, dangerous, but more than that it’s alive, a series of instincts wired together so it stays that way. We could say she was stupid, or reckless, or arrogant for sitting on that fence and baiting him. She isn’t that either. She’s just a girl. She’s still learning to love less recklessly. We could say a lot of things, but few of them would be as accurate as the simple truth. Every little girl at some point learns to be afraid, and we’re just happy this one made it out alive.
We’re thrilled that it was just a bull behind a gate, that she had the chance to jump off and run like hell, that she ran straight back home to her parents, that they told her the bull was just scared and to be careful next time. That she’ll realize this one day too. That she was lucky.
Lillian Durr (she/they) is a Springfield, Missouri-based writer and poet, currently pursuing a MA in English at Missouri State University. Her writing is published in Door is a Jar Literary Magazine and The Crossroads Review. You can find more of her creative work on Bluesky @lillian-durr-art.bsky.social.