Ponies Zeppoli and sausages perfume the greasy air where raffish carnies and their hapless beasts pack the end-of-summer fair. Watermelon rinds lie grinning in the sawdust as I scamper towards the ponies with their hearts of broken trust. Harnessed to a wheel, one to each spoke, they yield to their masters and drive the wooden yoke. Like children who have felt the lash upon their hide, resigned they revolve, longing to revive the fractured life inside. Looking down, my mother says to me, "How sad it is to see, such gentleness condemned to toil and drudgery." She slips her fingers around my sticky hand and leads me further on to the cotton candy stand. But life is not a sweet confection wrapped around a paper wand -- not at the gaudy fairgrounds, or in the greater world beyond.