The Rabbit
Location
There are a couple of centimeters of skin
that you can pull off of my arms,
where muscles have atrophied
for two years from underuse.
The skin is soft, but when
you pinch it you can feel a
grid of tissue intersecting and
connecting like a network of
swamp vines.
What no one tells you when
you're on crutches is that
you can't let the rubber head
at the top dig into your
armpit too much. Your
skin will get red and swollen.
Your hands will get
tough and sometimes have
little ghostly blisters
that will fade, but never
disappear completely.
Every movement that you make
will require your core,
suck it in, suck it up,
you use your upper body.
It isn't like walking
at all. Your leg is a
point on a mathematical compass.
When you try to be
independent from your
crutches you're
forced to learn how to
maneuver yourself around
by using stable objects.
You become a leech
and the only nutrient
you yearn for is movement.
When you have to get to
the fields that are behind
your high school for
soccer, you have to leave
right after the last bell.
You wear your practice
clothes, because you've
adapted, little leech, you
know what can fit onto
your metamorphic body.
You know the trail that
would be fastest for your
weak fleshy body so you
can get to practice on time.
Coach would never accept
it if the captain was late,
he was already upset that
your transformation out
of the cocoon was into
a leech and not a moth.
You weren't attracted to the
lights. You stayed in the dark
away.
When you passes the fenced
track, carrying the weight of
blood movement that you
sucked out of people for
six hours, eight including
when your mother had to pull
down your pants for you to
pee, you pass a dead rabbit.
Its grey fur looked like
your leg, fading in color.
You stopped your extend,
pull, hop pattern to stare at
it.
For a calculated eight
weeks you passed by
the rabbit. It never ran,
hopped, pulled its long
legs apart and together.
It bloated. The rabbit
burst, infected with other
parasites that ate away
at its movement. Fiber
by fiber, the skeletal
muscles to tendons
dissipate into the
creatures. You watch
in horror every day
you pass, but you don't
change your route to
get up to the field.
The moths never see
the rabbit.
Moths fly into lights
all the time. They bump
off their dust. If human
hands touch the tiny
scales made from hairs
that allow them to fly,
their movement
is seized and they are
crippled. They kill
themselves in
order to get light. They
blind themselves, fly
into flames and cars.
Eventually, light
mars and kills them.
Your bite does not cause
pain. You rely on people
in order to live. You
need help in order to
survive.
And you do survive.