Fear And Friday’s Poem (A Stable Hand’s Take)

I am dirt ground into the cracks of my hands,
hay stuck in my hair,
dust so thick in my lungs I cough it up black some mornings.

Too quiet. Too rough.
Most people take one look and decide I ain’t worth the effort.
Fine by me.

I am loyal past stupid, past reason—
to any horse or any sorry human
who ever gave me the smallest bit of decency.

I’ve been in this barn before the world even remembered to wake up,
frost burning my fingers,
steam rolling off my back while I worked.

I’ve taken a horse that was damn near broke in body and spirit
and watched him learn to trust a human hand again.

And I’ve looked dead into eyes wide with pure terror—
the kind that says the world already ruined him once.
That shit stays with you forever.
Burns behind your eyelids when you try to sleep.

Stay in this life long enough
and the barn will reach in, grab your heart, and twist until something snaps.

You’ll watch horses you’d die for get old, get lame, get put down.
You’ll hold their head while the light leaves their eyes,
tell them it’s okay even though your voice cracks like a kid’s.
Then you’ll muck out the stall the next morning like nothing happened,
because the rest of them still need feeding.

You’ll load up one you love in a trailer one day,
watch it pull out the driveway headed for another barn.
You’ll stand there in the dust it left behind,
chest hollow,
wondering if they’ll be good to him,
if he’ll remember you.

You smile and wave anyway,
then go back inside and throw hay like the world didn’t just rip something out of you.

That’s the fucking deal.
That’s what it costs to love something that don’t belong to you—
not really.

This life don’t teach you from pretty words in a book.
It beats patience into you with sore muscles and frozen mornings.
It teaches kindness because anything less gets you killed or kills something you love.

And worst of all, it shows you who the hell you really are,
every single day,
whether you can stand to look or not.

Most people are scared of tomorrow.
I ain’t.
Tomorrow the barn will still be here, cold and honest.
Hay will rustle.
Horses will shift and blow soft through their noses.

And somewhere between the dust and the weak daylight
I’ll remember why I keep letting this work hollow me out.

I never picked this life looking for glory.
There ain’t none.
I picked it because one day a horse looked at me—
scared, half-wild, broken—
and still decided I was worth trusting.

After that… I was done for.
The horses chose me.
And every rough, long, heart-ripping day since,
I’ve been too stubborn to walk away.

So when they ask me how I do this job,
how I keep showing up after everything gets taken,
I don’t got some clean answer for ‘em.

I just look ‘em dead in the eye and say:

You don’t “deal with it”…
you carry it.

You carry the dirt in your hands,
the dust in your lungs,
the ghosts in every empty stall.
You carry the ones you lost,
the ones you saved,
and the ones that saved you right back.

Some mornings the weight almost breaks you.
Other mornings the sun hits the barn just right
and a horse leans his head against your chest
like you’re the only safe thing left in his world.

That’s enough.
That quiet thank you in a soft nicker,
that moment of trust from something that don’t owe you a damn thing—
that’s what keeps me in the fight.

I ain’t strong.
I’m just too stubborn to quit on the ones who never quit on me.

So I wake up tomorrow,
cough up yesterday’s dust,
and do it all over again.

Because this life didn’t promise me easy.
It only promised me real.
And real is worth the ache.