Dead Horse
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
The search began in the soft hours,
fingers tracing listings across oceans
until the black cotton appeared—
four hundred and fifty dollars of yesterday,
white letters screaming the name of a song
that once roared through younger veins.
It had been loved once, worn to near-rags,
carried through nights that felt endless and wild,
until the fabric itself gave up its ghost.
A new shirt was chosen—
a quiet offering, a bridge of memory and thread,
meant to say: I still remember.
Meant to honour something
that had once fit perfectly.
Then truth came, sharp as a seam rip.
The shirt stayed unbought.
Suspended forever in the cart of what would never be given.
Perhaps that was the truest ending possible.
Because love had already gone the way of the dead horse on the shirt—
once thunder, once alive and kicking hard against the world,
now collapsed in the dust of the road,
heavy, silent,
long since returned to earth.
The foolish heart had circled back anyway.
Had lifted the same worn stick of hope
again and again and again,
believing old bones might rise,
believing breath might return,
believing what had long been gone
might somehow remember how to live.
But some horses die and stay dead.
Some loves do not end all at once.
They decay quietly.
By degrees.
Bone by bone.
Until one day the body is still there,
but life is not.
No perfect replica.
No expensive offering of black cotton and white fire.
No tenderness mistaken for resurrection.
Nothing brings breath back
to what has already gone cold.
Only this remains:
the quiet, shattering knowledge
that the beating should have stopped long ago.
That love had already left the room
while hope kept talking to its ghost.
And the kindest thing left to do
is lay the stick down,
turn away,
and let the silence settle
over what was once loud enough to shake the walls.
Keep My Words Alive
If this poem has stayed with you, you can help keep my words alive. Every bit of support helps carry the stories forward.
WHERE WORDS MEET MORNING LIGHT
BEGIN EACH DAY WITH SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL
Every morning at 11:11AM, I send a poem — sometimes soft, sometimes devastating, always true.
💚 Subscribe now to read and breathe and feel along with me 💚
Poetry by Britt Wolfe:
Dead Horse is about the painful moment hope finally collides with reality—and the realization that some forms of love do not die dramatically, but decay quietly over time while hope keeps mistaking absence for possibility. This poem explores nostalgia, grief, and the deeply human instinct to keep trying long after something has already ended. At its heart, it is a reckoning with the difference between love and longing—and the devastating clarity that sometimes the kindest thing we can do is stop trying to resurrect what has long since gone cold.