​​Registered Name: No It's Not Me

Born in New York on March 17, 2010

Sired by Leroidesanimaux (BRZ) Out of Ocean's Spray by Gulch

​​I remember my body before I remember speed. The way the ground hummed under me when I was young, the tightness in my chest before the doors opened, the collective breath held by everyone except me. My muscles learned their job long before my bones had finished becoming themselves. Forward was the only language I was taught, and I spoke it fluently.

Before races had meaning, they had repetition. I was prepared, presented, moved from place to place while I was still growing. I raced until I was six years old—thirty-one times asked to empty myself out before I had ever been allowed to fill. I won when I could. I finished even when everything in me ached with tomorrow. When racing ended, there was no season of rest. At seven, I was sent to be bred. Then again at eight. At nine. At ten. My body was hungry in ways no one recorded. I wanted to hold life inside me, but I couldn’t. I lost pregnancies quietly, my body too depleted to sustain what it was being asked to give. Those losses passed without names. At eleven, I finally carried a foal to term. I guarded him with every breath I had left. In 2021, he was taken from me. I do not know where he went. That not-knowing still lives in my body.

For a while, I lived alongside another mare who understood me without words. Warm Wishes stayed close, steady when everything else shifted. But the grass thinned. Feed stopped coming. Horses disappeared. Hunger sharpened the air. Eventually, we were moved again, our history reduced to weight, our identities replaced by numbers.

The place after that was loud and unforgiving. Fear pressed in from all sides. I did not know what would happen next. I only knew that nothing familiar was coming back for me. Relief and confusion arrived together when the movement stopped and I was asked, gently, to step forward.

Here, life slowed in ways my nervous system had forgotten were possible. Food came without urgency. Space opened around me. But grief came, too. While I was still separated, still healing, Warm Wishes grew weaker. She did not survive what came before. I stood in that loss, hollowed and inconsolable, carrying yet another ending inside my ribs.

I was not alone in that grief. Nearby was another mare who had lost the one who knew her best. She stood guard over her friend until there was nothing left to guard. We did not rush toward each other. We simply stood. Over time, our breathing found the same rhythm. Our steps began to match. Loss recognized loss, and something gentle grew there. Not a replacement. A remembering.

Now, life arrives quietly. I notice the warmth of sun along my back, the steadiness of routine, the dignity of being seen without expectation. I am curious. I am observant. I have opinions about where I like to stand and who I like beside me. I listen more than I move. I am no longer asked to prove anything. My worth is no longer transactional.

I carry what I have lost, but it no longer defines me. I stand strong in who I am now, shaped by what I endured and by what finally stayed.

The name that belongs to me—the one I answer to—is NoNo.