Afleet Alex died.

On February 6th.

I didn't find out until now because the Blood-Horse app never sends me notifications anymore, so I only see things if they pop up on IG, and I'm not on there much anymore, either.

He was twenty-four. "Infirmaties of old age."

(And I don't watch, anymore, but he was one of mine, grandfathered in from when I did.)

(And when he was pensioned, I used to think, "I could still see him, if I could get there," but now that's no more.)

(And they made me cry for Barbaro tonight, too.)

Everything is horrible, and I'm so tired...

(Give me a pale horse to ride across the fucking rainbow. You know the one.)

It's still a week out, really too early to be making firm predictions about the weather, but right now they're predicting partly cloudy for both Thursday and Friday, Thursday night going into Friday morning being the first (total) lunar eclipse visible from here in...god, what, three fucking years?

Rainbow Dash? I need a favour...

(Seriously, you don't even know how desperately much I need to drink the blood of this darkened wounded moon...)

The glory of drowning in despair is that when you're already in over your head, it doesn't matter how much deeper it gets.

category 5 geomagnetic storm

The first since 2003. I always go look when there's even a chance, but they never show. And I wouldn't have even known about this one if Mayra hadn't said the sky's purple all the way down there. So I rolled out of bed and went around the corner where it's a little darker, but I couldn't tell if that was what I was seeing or not.

So I walked, and I walked, and I ended up on the hill by the overpass, and...they were so faint, so faint, but they were dancing for me...

And the shitty-ass camera I have on this shitty-ass phone T-Mobile forced me to take has no proper manual settings, and what passes for Night Mode on it is just as shitty, but even that picked up the colours I couldn't see myself. If he hadn't been in bed, I could have gotten amazing ones, because his camera has an astronomy mode.

I tried singing to them, but they didn't come for me. I think they were still too far away to hear...

('til I lost you there, on the open road...)

I had a dream about horses that was so horrible I don't ever want to remember it. Probably the worst I've ever had.

(I think it means I shouldn't give in to the urge to watch the Derby today just because I haven't in so long that it feels weird. Or maybe it's just my guilt over even thinking about it manifesting. And I won't be, I won't be, but god, I hope it's not some kind of omen anyway. It wasn't about racehorses, just random horses, but god, it was so awful, so awful...)

But Jens was in it. And the bad things didn't happen to him. But he was still an old pony, and I knew he was going to die, probably dying already. But he was inside my house, asleep on the couch with me beside him...

(God, I miss him so much.)

I remembered this year.

And next Saturday is the first Saturday in May, and I won't be watching for the first time in I don't even know how many. I have no idea who the runners even are.

But I rode a horse today, and we run, because he has the sweetest canter I've ever sat, and most of the time, I'm not even afraid of it. Only on him, but what does it matter, since I don't ride to show anymore?

(And someday, it'll be me and you...)

WinStar Stallion Paynter Euthanized Due to Lameness

Loved him so much. Sweet, brave boy...

(Just proves you can fight and fight and fight and the world will still take you out as soon as it finds a way, unless you're fighting to get out of it, and then it keeps you here as long as it can.)

This was the first year in...I don't know how long...that I didn't watch the Breeders' Cup, or even try, or even have (much) interest. I haven't watched anything in so long I don't even know who most of these horses are anymore. It's probably better that way (but I still get the news, because that's my penance..). Two were vanned off on Friday. One a minor fracture, back in his stall with a cast on a few hours later and expected to be back on the track in a few weeks, and the other needed surgery. Haven't heard anything else about him. Beholder's first little champion (her others weren't quite able to follow in her hoofsteps), Tamara, came out of it injured. Echo Zulu's career ended a couple of weeks ago. Bad break. The kind where you just hope they survive surgery and the recovery process and don't think about anything else yet lest you jinx it.

(And so many others during the lead-up. Broken legs and hoof issues and "cardiac events". The lucky ones got to retire.)

The only one I was interested in was the Dirt Mile, because it had the warm fuzzy fairytale attached. Cody's Wish, named for the Make-A-Wish kid that wanted to meet racehorses, and the farm wanted him to be able to actually interact with a foal, so they picked one who was pretty chill and might not mind the wheelchair, and mind it he did not. He walked over and laid his head in Cody's lap, and thus was destiny forged. And he turned out to be amazing. Until this spring, I think, any race Cody was at, Cody's Wish won, and even with those couple of losses, he'll stand for $75K in his first year at stud. He won the Dirt Mile last year and was going for the repeat, and it was his swan song on top of it, and I didn't see it and haven't looked for it yet, but apparently he sang it like an angel and flew without wings from gate to wire - or maybe a djinni, because I can imagine what it sounded like when he crossed that final line, and everyone in the horse world got their wish granted.

And then Cody himself died on the way home, because you can't have the wish without the twist. (It was always going to end that way. He'd already beaten the original estimate by many, many moons and suns. But goddamn, universe. Timing. X_x )

(And you know someone was optioning it for Hollywood before the corpse was even cold. -.-)

Fifteen years ago (I didn't even realize it had been that long until I started mathing up something else), on October 8th, at eight pm, I was sitting in my room in the last house I lived in in Georgia, listening to I95's eight pm three-in-a-row Metallica block. No Leaf Clover had just come on, and the phone rang, and it was Lynn, and Quiz was gone. I always remember all those weird little details because of how cosmically well they lined up, like if you were writing a story for dramatics, that's how you'd do it.

I don't mourn him constantly like I do some of the others, but I miss him, and when I think enough about it, I still cry. He was a good boy, and a good friend. Sometimes I needed to cry ON him, and he would stand, so kindly and so patiently, until I was done, no matter how long it took.

Tomorrow will be three months (so, July 9th), and this is the thing I haven't been able to write about, since Pie died. Probably. Almost certainly. I don't fucking KNOW because whatever happened happened while I was gone for the weekend, but because she did so often go curl up and sleep in a hidey-hole and scare me all the time anyway, I didn't think too much about it when I didn't see her Sunday night, and then when I asked my mom on Monday if SHE had seen her, she said no. Not since that fucking Saturday. And she swore she couldn't have gotten out, but that's what she said the last time, too. So Michael posted to Facebook for me, and drove around looking for her every time he picked me up or dropped me off, and I can't even bear to write the words like that ("since Pie died") because it makes it too real and I want so desperately to cling to even the tiniest shred of hope, but... She wasn't a far wanderer, and we found her within a few days that time. It's been far, far too long now. She almost has to be dead in this house somewhere, but we don't know where because of mother's fucking garbage empire (I honestly don't think it's EVER been as bad as it is here, and it was so bad at the Union Street house that Michael's parents had to tear out and redo the entire floor we lived on (but if I ever said that to her, she'd tell me they were lying because they're mean people who hate her for no reason, and I must hate her, too, or I wouldn't take their side).

(And I do not like these people. They terrify me. I have no reason to take their side. But she's legitimately delusional in her ability to assess how bad it was.)

She claims she's looked, but if she has, and I really don't believe that, it's only been in the most cursory way, because "she's in so much pain" and it's "so hard" and she "doesn't know where to put the things she'd need to move to look in the place she thinks Pie probably went", and "she gets too emotional to keep going, too". I've spent three months sobbing, begging, because I have nothing of her. No remains, no ashes, not even a piece of fur or whisker or shed claw to put in the page of her Pet's Life book set aside for that. But it doesn't matter. The absolute anguish I'm in over losing the cat I had for nearly twenty years (and oh, I thought she'd make it to twenty; she never seemed old or sick at all, and not even in the way that old and sick animals hide it for protection from predators. She was a kitten to the end), that I held minutes after she was born, that followed me everywhere, that I had never been apart from for more than a few days until that month I was so sick and had to temporarily move back in with Michael isn't enough for her to push through her own for me. And she's both forbidden me to look for her myself and physically intercepted me when I've tried, because "she doesn't want me to see her like that" and anyway, there are "things that belong to her in those rooms, too, and she doesn't want me touching them, just like I don't want her touching mine". Which tells me as good as the words themselves that it's not about the potential trauma of me being the one to find her, it's petty revenge for me not allowing her to continue to use, break, and steal my belongings (she also won't allow me access to the things in those rooms that are MINE because "I don't NEED them, I just WANT them").

And in this, she's lost me forever. She poured the gasoline when she turned on me after the eviction and tried to say it was also my fault for not helping enough (despite having assured me in the weeks leading up to it, while she did next to nothing about the specific issues she was told to fix because "it's not trash, it's just stuff I have in bags because there's nothing else to put it in [and some of it was, but some of it was also very definitely trash, and either way, she was told SHE COULD NOT CONTINUE TO DO SO] and told Michael and I we didn't know what we were talking abput when we tried to warn her about how low-tolerance his father would be, that "she knew it was completely her fault"), and she lit the match when she threatened to abandon me if I "embarassed" her by having any more triggered panic attacks at the doctor's office, but now she's dropped it, and her last bridge has burned so thoroughly there aren't even ashes of it, wither, and I'm fairly certain she knows it. Because she's already said she'll never see me again if she moves in with Darline and I move in with Mayra because I won't come see her (it's a two-hour drive, and Mayra goes to Florida to see HER family all the time. It would be NO problem for her to drop me off on the way. But right now, and I might change my mind once I've been away from her for a while (if it ever even happens), right now, no, I do not want to see her. So she's switched to trying to talk me out of it, on the grounds of "what if I have a meltdown at Mayra's, and she's too far away to help?" (Mayra's known me for thirty years. She's seen me at my absolute worse, she knows how to deal with me and not to take anything that's said or done during those episodes personally, and she also knows I'm like that much less often when I'm NOT AROUND PEOPLE WHO SHIT ON AND TRIGGER ME in the first place. She's the ONLY person I can say that about, and the only person I still trust on any level.)

So the eighth. The ninth. And the tenth will be a year for Layla. Three days, all right together, like I'm a Lunchable and the universe is stacking just to watch me fall over. And then there's the one at the end of October...

I wish it would just go ahead and take me, too.

(And I still hate those weird-hours phone-whinnies the same way I learned to hate those weird-hours barn calls.)

https://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/270199/horse-of-the-year-funny-cide-dies-at-23

Colic. Fucking colic.

(I always dreamed of seeing him someday...)

Roger Payne, who discovered that humpbacks sing, is also gone.

(They will sing for him tonight, and it will be a song that passes from ocean to ocean and so encompass the whole of the world, for all oceans are one.)

And I, I am in a hell I never thought I would be in once, let alone twice, but I am too tired and tear-dry and dead inside to write my Inferno right now.

(But all these tears I have shed for everyone else - )

(Who will shed them for me?)

I thought we got through it clean. I didn't know the horse that won and I'm annoyed as shit that they're basically ignoring said horse in favour of turning it into a feminist propastravaganza because he was run by a female trainer, but I thought we at least got through it clean.

It was Excursionniste in the thirteenth, the nightcap, after the main network coverage ended. And then it was Mashnee Girl in the first on Sunday. Both on the turf course, both left fronts, both by the same trainer. Both dead on the track.

But it's even more than that. It's been six. Reed Kan and Chaysenbryn during races, Troubling Moon and Battle Station during training. (And Reed Kan's trainer has had four since January, the others at Aqueduct.)

Thirteen at Churchill. One at Pimlico. Six at Belmont. That's twenty in less than two months, not even counting the deaths at other tracks (of which I'm sure there have been more than just Aqueduct). And all of them had at least one on their respective Triple Crown days.

Zenyatta had what ultimately turned out to be her last foal, after they decided it was time to retire her from breeding because she's getting old. (She's nineteen. She's the same age as Pie! How did that happen? When?) A little filly. One last princess. (Ohh, I wish they'd name her that, like The Last Meow. I wonder whatever happened to her?)

(And I would still bow to the Queen and come up with handfuls of grass as tribute...)

Lion Heart died a few days ago. Heart failure (oh, how the universe loves its cruel jokes). Twenty-two. He was my Derby baby in 2004, and lost to Smarty Jones. Went to stud the same year as Tapit and Megdalia d'Oro, got sold to a Turkish operation in 2010.

Edgar Prado is retiring.

(So maybe it's fitting that this is the fading end, because those were my glory days the same as theirs, before Barbaro shattered his leg and my heart went with it, and I don't know how I even have anything left to break. It's just shards that have already been trampled into the ground, with no edges left to be found...)

(But I would still bow before my King. ;_; )

he is moving like -

(he is moving like a tremendous machine.)

(I wouldn't have gone out of my way for it. Wouldn't have gotten up just for it. But I was already up and out for Community Day, and there's nothing else on, and -)

(It's so easy to loosen your grip on your morals. So easy to lose them, when you're shoving them through a loophole.)

(I hate myself.)

(Just let them all stay okay...)

Churchill Downs suspended the rest of the meet (inasmuch as they suspended it at Churchill nd moved it to Eliis Park, and only after the new federal oversight committee asked them to).

Because it's twelve now.

It's been twelve since last weekend, but I haven't had the fucking energy to even write it down. Lost in Limbo on Friday, and Kimberly Dream (a horse who possibly wouldn't even have been allowed to run if it had been a California race because of how badly she'd performed, and how many lengths she'd lost by, in her previous five) on Saturday. And I kept counting on my fingers and only coming up with eleven and had to go fucking look it up on an outside source again, and there was one the day before Rio Moon that no one on this side bothered to talk about at all, even in passing. Bosque Redondo, who at least got the "dignity" of being vanned off, instead of having a fucking tarp pulled up so the crowd doesn't have to watch them die on the track.

And I am screaming at the void inside my head because there's nowhere I can go to do it out loud, and still having a fucking moral dilemma, because even with two of Tapit's and not one but now two of Gunny's in the Belmont, it's still not that hard a decision that I probably don't want to, and definitely probably shouldn't, watch it (yes, I am tempted, but not enough, at least right now, to override the rage and fear), but Sodashi's running tonight (it seems like a quick turnaround, but maybe my sense of time is just off like usual; I haven't actually put a calendar in front of myself and counted-checked), and lord God help me, she is so beautiful and I love watching her so much. ;_; (Maybe she'll win, and they'll retire her on the spot, and she cn go out a sound queen and it can be the last race I ever watch.)

(I guess I can somehow still fucking dream, even in the midst of my goddamn living nightmares.)

(And I used to say Empire Maker Did with some sort of pride and joy, because even if he wore but one crown, he fathered the horse who would father the horse that wore all three, and all horses are nude beneath their tack, but some of them shine like silk and it makes it easier to overlook. But the curtains - the tarps - have been dropped, and the clock ticks ever-closer to midnight, and I have abandoned my mask and my iron shoes, because I cannot pretend now that it is anything more than a legacy of death, as all empires have ultimately been, and ultimately fallen to.)

<sup>(And yet the Pharoah is still my king, but -)

(I can hate in equal measure to my love -)

(- for this is the spirit that dies.)</sup>

...NINE. Fucking NINE.

Fusaichi Pegasus, who won the 2000 Derby, died Tuesday. He was twenty-six. Good, long life. Made lots of pretty babies. Loved. Got the top headline in Blood-Horse.

Discreet Cat died today. He was twenty. Still actually getting up there for a horse, though it said his was actually due to illness. Also made lots of pretty babies, especially in (but not limited to) Japan. Definitely loved; the spokesperson for the stud farm said such beautiful things about him. Didn't get top billing, but still an actual headline.

Swanson Lake broke down Sunday, was "vanned off a hundred yards past the wire," deemed to be inoperable, and put down. I only know because I was reading an article about THE NEW HIGH-TECH FUCKING SCANNERS AT CHURCHILL that are supposed to catch this crap before it gets a chance to kill them, and the first line said "at least nine". I even went back to the issue for that day, and nothing. I had to track it down through the Kentucky-local channels, and I used to hate looking for racing news in non-racing sources because some of them were either not familiar enough with it or already so biased they deliberately gave misinformation, but they're not wrong now.

Why doesn't she matter like they do?

Why didn't Rio Moon?
Why didn't Code of Kings?

(And the connections of White Abarrio, who were among the people to have their horses forcibly scratched from Kentucky races after the two of Saffie Joseph's went down, transferred him to RICK FUCKING DUTROW, who just got his license back after a ten-year suspension for all the shit he did.)

(Please excuse me while I vomit.)

^{(And I shouldn't even read the news, at this point. I should cut it off like I have everything else. But I can't stop. I think I think I deserve to suffer for having watched it, which amounts to tacitly supporting it, as long as I did, and this is how.)}

First time in twenty years I haven't watched the Preakness.

It was a single line in yesterday's Blood-Horse. An eighth horse at Churchill. Another case where they didn't bother to say who or what and I had to look it up myself to find out it happened days ago and, unless it was buried in another article, no one thought he was important enough to mention it.

(His name was Rio Moon. He was a grandson of Malibu Moon. He broke down at the wire and died on the track.)

And I already hadn't been feeling it even before that, but I had my clock set for part of the undercard coverage anyway, and when it went off, I realized I didn't care enough to get up for any of it and just went back to sleep. I woke up about ten minutes after post time and came out to see if I had actually missed it, and I had, and Mage didn't win, and I had no regrets.

But now it's gone from no regrets to "glad" I didn't, because my mom messaged me abuot another horse dying, and I thought she meant Rio Moon, but when I opened today's Blood-Horse... It was Havnameltdown, who stumbled on the first turn of an undercard race, dropped his jockey (who surely would have pulled him up otherwise), and continued to run on what was presumably an already-broken leg until an outrider caught him, and it was an irrepairable injury, and he died on the track.

I was more excited about the Victoria Mile (a Japanese race) than I was the Derby or Preakness, because Sodashi was in it, and oh, she fought so valiantly, and it came down to a head-bob and she just didn't get her nose down in time. I watched every replay of it even through my tears because she's just so pretty, but as much as I might have loved for her to retire a champion, now I just want them to retire her before she gets hurt, too.

Affirmed won the Triple Crown in 1978, the year before I was born. I waited my entire life to see another king, and now I've seen two. But how many have I seen die for it in that time? Things that I will never unsee. That I still have nightmares about. That will haunt me for the rest of my life.

(I will never not ascend to grace when I hear He is moving like a tremendous machine. I will never forget the alchemy in Dubai, when Chrome turned to gold, or what it sounded like when Pharoah crossed the line at Belmont, or Justify emerging from the fog during a Preakness so cloaked in rain that no one, even the people there, could see who was in front. The word Legendary projected onto the track for Winx. But right now, I don't ever want to watch a race again.)

(I've said that before. I might eventually go back on it, because it wouldn't be the first time for that, either. But this is a fucking bloodsport, and if it takes its last breath during whatever's left of mine, I doubt I will mourn it.)

(But I will mourn them for the rest of my days.)

(Someone has to.)

A horse named Mage won.

I should love that.

On the fiftieth anniversary of Secretariat's coronation, the only horse to be stabled in the barn Secretariat was stabled in himself won.

I should love that.

I don't.

I can't.

It was Code of Kings.

He flipped THREE TIMES while being saddled and broke his neck.

It was last Saturday.

It was Barbaro's birthday...