Standing outside the church after the meeting,
smoking a cigarette, I see a rabbit
on the other side of the chain link fence.

The first man to share had left work to be there,
needed it that badly. I am not like him.
He described, in a fit of rage, slamming

a drunk patron against the wall.
If I hadn’t been pulled away, he said.
The rabbit darts into the dark of my shadow,

and I almost believe it’s gone until I see
it’s burrowed under, through. It’s right
in front of me, nothing between us.

I didn’t want to feel like that, he said.
I kneel in the grass, hold out my arms,
and it leaps, awkward, froglike, into my embrace.

I imagine this might be difficult to believe,
but it happened: my tears, my silence.
Holding the thing—not a metaphor, a rabbit,

muscle and sinew snaking under the pelt
against my palm, ears flattened,
white-tufted tail flashing, twitching

whiskers and brittle bones, hindlimbs sprung
like a trap, conical heart prone
to failure, all of it alive to the world, all of it

surrendered—I know what I would have done.

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Image: “Hyper-focused” by Alex J. Tunney