Heaven perches on hills
of grieving groundhogs.
Small paws. Small claws.
I bless my childhood rabbit
in a church down the block,
a ritual I no longer believe in.
Rabbits thump the ground
to warn each other.
Panic travels through soil,
a kind of Morse code,
urgent, untranslated.
At night I leave the window open,
just a crack:
an airway,
a narrow confession.
So there remains the chance
someone might hear me,
might mistake the sound
for something worth saving.
My bedroom walls split open,
bandaged with posters,
with blasphemy.
String lights hum overhead,
thin as IV lines,
tourniquets tightening the dark,
trying to slow the bleed
of whatever leaves me at night.
Still,
no one kneels to the grass.
No one presses an ear
to the dirt
for the thud
of a small, frightened heart.
No one listens for prey
unless they mean to find it.
So I rehearse the silence,
call it evidence.
No one will save me
from what I’m meant to become.
I don’t believe in God.
I believe in rabbits,
in the language of their fear,
how grief makes a signal
out of the body.
I want that
to be enough.
Bella Melardi is a poet and author. She writes about the political and personal. She attends OCADU.