My dad tells me that if I pick up the baby rabbits
In the downy hollow
And I put my reckless fingers on their infant bodies,
Their mother will sense me and
They will never be loved.
But a child with shaking hands
Does not know what it means to hold.
And a father with an instinct and a command
Does not know what it means to nurture.
When I am 9 the neighbor’s dog drags bunnies
From a burrow next to the fence
And I see them bleed red and I hear their bones snap quick
Like a warning
In the jaws of something bigger.
I know it is my fault because I wanted to hold
Their heartbeats in my hands
And I wanted to feel their wispy fur against my chest.
And I wanted to be a daughter that was gentle and good.
I hear my dad’s warning hot in my ear like the breath
Of a barking dog.
I hope it’s true that some predators don’t have a taste for rabbits.
The first time I run 3 miles I am 11 and my dad is jogging ahead of me
Turning around and backpedaling, like it’s easy, and
Telling me to make my body work.
I throw up in the gutter and we walk home
And he tells me it’s ok, but it’s not.
I twist my ankle at 13 on a run and I sit
On the front step outside my house
Cool cement against my thigh, heat spreading
In sick twangs through my body.
A rabbit running, stops in the yard stark still and looks at me.
Its eyes are black and its ears are wiry and
It knows what I have done.
In high school my dad tells me that if I lose 15 pounds I will be faster,
Like he’s afraid of the way my body makes me woman.
And he doesn’t see the way I turn to face the window in the car
And he doesn’t hear the way my heart thumps
Like a bunny in the mouth of a dog.
So I run hard at dawn on the 3 mile loop and some white furred
Wretched thing darts across
The tar black road and across
My path and I know
Even a rabbit can twist an ankle.
