A Memorial for a Wild Rabbit

Art by Lisa Falzon

CW: Animal Death

Your wide eyes and quivering nose

Long Leporidae ears

The chaotic dart and dash of strong lean legs

are a joy to watch

until you run pell-mell into the road.

A scream, high, short, and sharp.

I slowly realize it’s me.

Watching from a patch of green grass.

Wondering if whoever hit you paused

A single moment of their busy day

to mourn. I wonder if they hoped you

might really be okay.

I wonder why they didn’t stop.

But we do, my friend and I.

Stop working, stop everything.

Take long gloves, a crate filled

with shredded paper across the busy street.

I sob all the way home to get a shovel.

I sob on my way back to work

to dig your grave.

I pick a few meager early spring flowers

from my garden.

Young ferns still slightly curled into

fiddleheads.

Lungwort blooms for the breath

taken from you.

Pansies, my Grandmother’s favorite flower.

A few gentle spring violets.

One perfect petunia blossom.

We scatter them across your soft fur

And sift earth across you with our fingers.

Adorning the packed dirt with a circle of rocks.

She places a stone.

I place a stone.

Time stops for a moment, to grieve

a life lost because of a world

where we won’t stop for a moment.

Photographs by Christopher Brinkman