Tightrope

   For months it felt like I was standing on a tightrope dangling above a city, if I even made the slights movement in the wrong direction, I would topple of the thin wire and crash onto the hard asphalt below. Every appointment with the pediatrician was a panic attack, would the scale tip in my favor? Or had I lost weight. And if I was lucky enough to gain, how could I prevent myself from losing it again? I was frustrated, I was just below my needed weight 110 lbs. but I just could not reach it! I begged and begged for leniency but never got it. I can't recall what my diet was like, what I did and didn't eat but finally, one day I went the the pediatric office, and I weighed in a 111.
   The very next day I had my mom take me up to see the horses I had missed so much. I felt like a child going out for ice cream, squealing every few seconds for absolutely no reason at all, and jabbering away about how much I had missed them, wondering if Mateo had grown, how Tylo was doing.
We pulled into Bishops and I flew into the barn startling the horses. Very little had changed, if anything I could see nothing different but it still felt strange to be back. I had fallen out of the motion of horse life, a coat of unfamiliar strangeness was on everything that used to be as easy as breathing.
  Tylo and Mateo did not recognize me, and did not come towards me when I called to them. I was impressed by their improvement. Mateo was filling out into a very healthy muscular build, his spindly legs were still a little to long, but they had become stronger than before, the angular bones had filled in with muscles and fat. Tylo was starting to fill out, her back was still swayed, her shoulder's met in a peak above the rest of her sunken back and sloped up again to where her spine connected to her sharp withers. She still looked twenty instead of nine but there was improvement. A dim light was present in the dusty tired mare, she raised her head when I approached and awkwardly danced away. She was still a ghost but a faint glimpse of horse was beginning to show through.
 I went and grabbed a halter and lead rope and took both Tylo and Mateo into the small wooden stall. We crowded together, Mateo still pushy and demanding and Tylo still shifting away when I tried to pick her hooves clean but it was nice to be embraced by the smell of horses again and to feel their warm bodies moving under my hands and bumping into my torso. I had made it across the tightrope, and back into the bliss of horses that I had missed so much.