I was 12 when I first started milking. I stood on the rusted steps and looked into the parlor. Yellow rubber hoses throbbed in unison and squirmed against the lip of the pit when milk flashed through them. Each inflation grabbed the teat it held and softened its grip only for a moment before squeezing it again.

Editor’s note: Ryan Dennis is the son of a dairy farmer from western New York and a literary writer. One of his first published essays originally appeared in Progressive Dairyman in 2009 – “Tempting the Language of Farming.” That essay was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the most prestigious creative essay awarded to a U.S. essay writer.