A yellow rabbit lives under my bed
her box silk lined and water stained
I pretty much leave her alone now
but once I lifted the lid nearly every day
to feed her with my sorrow—
as bitter as lettuce and as fat as a slug

There have been other toy rabbits since
two blue, one pink and one a startling green
but they were luckier and lived in cages we called cots
and they were fed on hugs and sticky kisses
so I washed and mangled them dry
while their owners ran in their own fields of dreams

Later one rabbit got lost on a trip to Disney
another was put in a Goodwill bin
one was cut open by Australian border control
looking for smuggled seeds or something worse
and one still lives on my grown daughter’s bed
more reliable than any man
or so she tells me

Getting ready to down size
I’m hot and sweaty as I retrieve the box
weighting it in my hands
it feels so light like it might just be empty
a salt drop lands on the lid and I hesitate
but then I place it on the ‘to take’ pile
like I always knew I would

Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who swapped the valleys for the American East Coast. You can find some of her poetry and prose in Grey Sparrow Journal, Wales haiku Journal, Gyroscope, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Janus Lit, and upcoming in Poetry Wales. Adele has two poetry collections, Turbulence in Small Spaces (Finishing Line Press) and The Brink of Silence (Bottlecap Press).