Horses
Dear Mr. Ridley,
I’m writing to let you know that horses don’t have a gallbladder, which I’d learned from nightshift Steven who tried to coax a chuckle, maybe a snarl, or anything out of me after he peered into my cubicle past ten at night and stared at the crimson ink bleeding through the documents you’ve thrown on my table at lunchtime to be compiled—“polished and pristine,” you said in terse, clipped tone—for next day’s meeting.
He popped into my cubicle every night after that, the questioning frown easing into a pursed smile when he darted at my wrists tied to the laptop and spat random horse facts, like how they could sleep while standing to quickly fend off predators and that they value community, highly unlikely to roam or putter without a herd, isolation like a poison.
I forgot to water my plants after a month of constant meetings, and a whiff of death greeted me at the threshold of my apartment door. The parched soil reeked of something pungent, and the droopy leaves licked the windowsill, as if searching for light, then finding nothing.
I stuck a Post-it note on the fridge to sack the dead plants by morning, on top of the other notes that read family birthdays and meet-ups with friends that I failed to attend. I promised to grieve my plants when I woke up, but it sounded like a threadbare cliché in my ear.
My back touched the covers for the first time in a while, but I only stared at the ceiling, the stretch of silence conjuring the ping! ping! ping! from devices that I’d checked countless times if I’d turned off before I went home (which I did), and a familiar knot formed in my stomach, crooked and gnarled.
Last night, after you deposited a pile of documents on my table an hour before I was supposed to clock out and demanded I return them to your office “as soon as possible,” Steven nudged my elbow and told me horses can gallop shortly after birth.
A picture of some foal cantering across an open field, a frisson of excitement in its movement, flashed in my mind, and I wondered when the last time a gust of wind ever touched my nose.
Please accept this letter as a formal notice of my resignation. Thank you for having me as part of your team.
Sincerely,
Grace Elliott
Ada Pelonia
Ada Pelonia lives and writes in the Philippines. Her work has been nominated for Best Microfiction and appeared in HAD, Eunoia Review, Gone Lawn, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. Find her at adapelonia.weebly.com or on Instagram @_adawrites.