There’s a sort of poeticism to a carousel. There’s a lot of things to a carousel, to be honest. Depending on how you look at it, it can be equal parts poetic, horrific, or humorous. A horse in a cycle, never to escape. A horse impaled on a pole, trapped in an unending life, unable to feel the release of true death. A funny horse doing a fun spin.

Of course, this is all predicated on the assumption that the horse is alive, which it isn’t. Nothing in the plastic sheen of their dead eyes and rigid fiberglass frame even remotely indicates that. You would hope, at least. Horses—real horses, that is—are dangerous.

Sometimes, though, the horses are alive. Sometimes, they are real.

This is a lesson I learned when I was little. I don’t remember when, but one day, the horses neighed and whinnied and shook their head, unmoving on their bronze poles and quite content with that fact. Red lights in round bulbs painted their glossy fur, still shimmering with that telltale fiberglass sheen. The adornments were part of them, just as much the poles. There was this one horse, my favourite, with stark white fur and roses sprouted from the saddle.

Some were once wood, and those where the beautiful ones. They aged with grace and spoke with gravitas and wisdom. 

The black horse of chipped wood was one such horse. I spoke to him once, when I was little. I went to visit him, balanced over a wooden brace. I did not know what feeling his gaze conveyed (the emotions of a wooden horse are not easy to read), but it was at least contempt adjacent. But it had the same mane as the white horse, and it looked hurt. I suppose I wanted to help.

But as I approached, tried to call out… have you ever tried to talk in a dream? It was a lot like that. Like my words just could not come out, or at least died mere centimeters from my lips. 

“Have you come to feel safe?” The horse asked. “Is this carousel your mere plaything? Intruder.” It stirred slightly where it stood. I could do nothing but watch. “You tread here as if it is a playground. You walk as if it does not have consequence.” Its eyes settled on me—a deep, harrowing gaze. “You are here by the grace of things you do not understand, child. You do not understand the ripples caused by your presence, and indeed you were not designed to. How do you begin to understand? You are but a babe, grasping a closed hand at the night sky, trying to catch stars in your tiny fist.”

The world began to spin. The stars struck deep white lines into the sky. “The wall between us and the cosmos is thin. The Earth is to the Sun what the child is on the horse. The universe understands this.”

As my knees knocked, it tilted its head at me, as if in sheer contempt. “Run. Stew in your ignorance.”

And run I did, back to the white horse, spinning in the same rhythm as usual. But, as I grew older, as his unmoving, decommissioned form watched the carousel from the sidelines, I would think. 

With each spin of the carousel, a star in the sky moved. With each spin, the sun in the sky moved. A cosmic waterwheel, carrying the stars in its spokes. But on the carousel, we were free. The canopy sheltered me from this reality, where above me stood only fabric and lightbulbs. 

One moon-casted night, years later I stepped off the carousel, set a foot in the dew-kissed grass and approached the black horse again. As I turned to face the carousel, I could see them. The stars, bathing the world in white light, turning in the sky. The white horse, on its rotation, looked at me. First, disapprovingly. Then, sadly. Then, angrily. On the fourth spin, the fiberglass glare returned to its eyes, and its limbs grew rigid again.

“So it is, then.” I raised a hand to the horse. “To accept what cannot be understood. To accept that you are not a real horse, but that of a carousel.”