Your father takes you to the arcade. You play a few together: the racecar one, the other where you snowmobile off cliffs and always land right side up, even the outer space shoot ‘em up. These aren’t as exciting as the game you play alone, where you become a horse jockey. You pick out your pony from an open corral, and he says something to you, like I don’t know about this, or, who are you. I will be your best friend, you say with a hand to his soft nose. It costs extra tokens to feed him celery, his favorite, but it’s worth it because now he says, I trust you, and I will do my best. He has grown three pink hearts by his name. The races themselves are boring — pressing the big white button to kiss and cluck him onward. You just want to sit in the virtual horse’s shadow, offering another handful of virtual hay. You want to hear him speak again.

Hannah Treasure is a Lecturer in the Department of English at Clemson University. She received her MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College. Her chapbook, Written in the Stars, was selected as the Editor’s Choice for the 2025 Tomaž Šalamun Prize, and her work appears in The Greensboro Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Sugar House Review, Annulet, Afternoon Visitor, No Dear, Volume Poetry, and elsewhere.