In Quito, I rented a horse to take me to the top of the mountain’s fourteen thousand feet. The hills rising up like fingers tangled in clouds, pockmarked by colorful homes slanting down sides below. It was the first time I’d traveled alone. Fumbling through half-formed Spanish. Maybe it was the thin air, the thick body breathing beneath me. Maybe the way my loneliness had propelled me to another continent where no one knew who I was. But I felt something like God, stripped away from churches and prayer I'd given up on. On top of the world, riding horses.
Haley DiRenzo is a writer and practicing attorney. Her work has appeared in Gone Lawn, Flash Fiction Magazine, Eunoia Review, and Panoply, among others.