By Annie Dodson
The biggest rush of my life is when i eat beans because in that moment i am briefly a cowboy.
I cook beans so much. I wonder if its because i enjoy to be play pretend as a cowboy with the beans. I take a bite and all of a sudden i am squatting by a smokey fire, the mountain range glittering in my eyes like the reflection of an oasis on the surface of the sun. my boots crack on the gravel like the beans in my teeth, crunch crunch…. Like the embers of my cowboy fire.
I hop on my cowboy horse and take to the skies when i ingest the beans… black beans, pinto beans, great northern beans… they’re all cowboy modes to be unlocked by me. Each bean a different cowboy, with his own special hat. A classic cowboy for the black bean, riding high on the ridges of the west. The pinto bean? A quirkier cowboy maybe with a fringe on his vest. The great northern bean? I don’t know!
My horse would be named mrs. beanie friday, after my cowboy beans, and the classic cowboy riddle (you know the one). It would be a pinto horse, after my pinto beans. Tan and soft like a garbanzo bean, but rideable like a horse. It is strong enough to support my weight and the weight of my cowboy knapsack and canteen. My fire wood? I find along the way. My boots ? stolen from the first man i killed. If he was alive today he would be 100 years old! With the head of a snake and the eyes of a snake…. And just like a snake or something, he didn’t have legs when i was done with him.
Snake venom (*sssssss*) dripped from his two gold snakey teeth like the juice of my beans… simmering in the can over my spicy flames. I add sand to my flames so they make my beans salty.
My cowboy inner life is rich like the bank i rob. This is a stick up! I yell and then i rob the bank and then? I buy more beans for my cowboy lifestyle. Its a hard one, not for just anyone to live. But for me? My horse, my fire, my great western skyline, and my beans are all i need. But just as quickly as it came on, i swallow my last bean and return to the world of reality, tears dripping down my face and piss coming out of my body i break my bones and i wash my bean pot and i am back at my house in my kitchen with a dirty bowl and dirty spoon and a dirty life.