Reka Götz
In the event my 6-12-year-old brain is dissected, here is what you would find:
• peanut butter and jelly sandwich
• an encyclopedic record of imaginary equine-creatures
I spent my childhood twirling through paracosmic mind glitter. The universe orbited my senses as I reached and clawed; I was mechanized by a rabid desire to capture the unknowable. Each morning, I dressed myself in an armor of fantastic belief and weaponized my delusion— hurling unicorns at the toneless suburban experience.
Horses were my favorite shape of mythology. And I know so many who would agree. The supernatural horse girl brigade is like an invisible tsunami. Pegasus, centaur, kelpie, hippocampus… They all had me in a chokehold. Horses taught me mercuriality and strength; they gave me a literary ideal. A template for self determination.
I would trace the body of a horse. I knew the muscles that composed each limb, the knees that bent backward, the spiral of her nostril. I mastered her silhouette and then I made her mine. But the more tangible the horse, the more I kind of hated it. She needed wings, horns, and purple skin. She needed to evade logic so badly. When she sat in my mind, just the way I liked, I would seal her with a kiss of vanilla-scented marker.
I forged this symbol of beauty; a seductress that only existed as propaganda. She was the most flawless hologram. This discovery transformed me into an empty force— I contoured every bare corner with an advertisement, and I hid behind it. I taped pink ponies over my mirror. I had absolutely stared into the sun and blinded myself.
As I grew, not much has changed. The horses ran across time and reared their heads as lovers.
I’m only comfortable as an addict, neglecting myself in favor of another thing. My insides whittle away to make space, so I can colonize and be colonized. I build this nest for my vice, and then I let her feed upon me in an unworkable vacuum until she’s full or I’m perforated.
But every day I labor to undo my rituals and bend into something more equine. Perhaps someone who is present and upholds her value: She knows what’s not good for her. I want to exist as a companion who is both worshiped and feared. I want to soak deep within the collective unconscious and grow feathers, rainbows, scales… A place amongst my horses, where we lay around with glitter on our eyelids.
We are not real, or unreal. Just completely relinquished to becoming.