THE LEPER ADDRESSES THE DEAD HORSE HE FOUND IN THE ROAD Dear sister, you should know that I understand the need to run, to cut yourself open on barbs and write a goodbye note in blood on a splintered fence post, to escape the tilled earth and a life that offers oats so seldomly. I stand beside you, lay my hands upon your still-warm rib cage, and breathe in the steam lifting from your wet skin in the cool night air. I am drawing you into my body, saturating my blood in your sweat. There was something broken inside you long before the junkie crashed his truck into your flesh. There was something worse than fractures. It was a hollow place in your stomach that no dried grass could fill. I gather you in my veins and exhale with violence and hope that you find a current to drift lazily upon, that you find a row already plowed in which to rest your cracked hooves, that you are released back into the stars that gave birt...