bunny broken

Bunny, baby bunny.
It lies broken, breathing in this soggy box.
A crooked cardboard box I emptied with a hoarse cry. A bunny, baby bunny lay cradled in my two hands, hands clasped around baby bunny like praying, like praying that the blood was not from slipping guts or blood-choked lungs. Blood spotted on my hands like a flower, like flowers on a parlor wall.

My gray-cloud cat hunted sport today, hunted tortuous, hunted cruel. Cruel to break and play and break a baby.

I stroked baby bunny, I murmured as a mother murmurs, I looked in gaping gasps at bones, splintered.

Splintered...

Splintered, and shot through bunny flesh, useless. Useless and floundering front paws, floundering like flippers. Bunny, baby bunny flippering in the box with just an ounce of fight flaring in him. I cannot deny that fight. I cannot leave certain death when a sliver, a bloody splinter of life remains. Can I?

I gather clover. I gather alcohol and water. I gather baby pain killers. I tend to first things. First. I rack my head, I beat my chest, I struggle, with a limping memory, trying to remember shock. Shock racks bunny, baby bunny like a drug. This broken small frame rattles with quick-step breath like wounded soldiers on the march. Limping chest, breathing, breathing. It lies on its side, just breathing, so still otherwise. Otherwise, so still, I fear. I fear with reasonless desperation.

Bunnies make more, I reason. There are so many in the field. My green-eyed cat remains on the prowl, its afternoon tea disturbed by my distress.

Distress and death, death and distress, reasons, reasons. My reasons are few and far between and I ignore them as I gather bandages. I gather cottonballs for cottontails. I gather syringes. I pose as a doctor, just for today.

Bunny, baby bunny, it lies in a box, flippering. I hear it in the night, shuffling with small shuffles. Pitiful small shuffles.

I can neither look nor turn away.