(Orginally published on Moss Puppy Magazine and Grande Dame Magazine)

Heaven perches hills

of grieving groundhogs.

Small paws. Small claws.

I bless my childhood rabbit

in a church down the block,

a ritual I no longer believe in.

Rabbits thump the ground

to warn each other.

Panic travels through soil,

a kind of Morse code,

urgent, untranslated.

At night I leave the window open,

just a crack:

an airway,

a narrow confession.

So there remains the chance

someone might hear me,

might mistake the sound

for something worth saving.

My bedroom walls split open,

bandaged with posters,

with blasphemy.

String lights hum overhead,

thin as IV lines,

tourniquets tightening the dark,

trying to slow the bleed

of whatever leaves me at night.

Still,

no one kneels to the grass.

No one presses an ear

to the dirt

for the thud

of a small, frightened heart.

No one listens for prey

unless they hunting it.

So I rehearse the silence,

call it evidence.

No one will save me

from what I’m meant to become.

I don’t believe in God.

I believe in rabbits,

in the language of their fear,

how grief makes a signal

out of the body.