Life for a little while

This has been one of the hardest weeks. My other rabbit, Gnocchi, (Cosmo’s widow) is really sick. We’ve stayed up with her, making sure she doesn’t asphyxiate on the thick, white discharge coming out of her nose. (This is how Cosmo died.) We took her to a second vet, 3 hours away, where she stayed overnight and got fluids and antibiotics pumped into her tiny, critically dehydrated body. We brought her home yesterday, my partner’s tiny house that we’ve been sharing. But I’m moving out, we are breaking up, and I am about to make the long drive back to Oaxaca. 

Gnocchi is so weak that she can’t move around and gets stuck lying down, unable to get her legs underneath her.

I am overwhelmed, exhausted and heartbroken.

The other night, I pried myself out of the house for a walk. I went to the park across the street and stood under a tall tree. I was comforted by how big it was. How long it had been growing. How thick its trunk was. How I could lean against it with my whole body and it wouldn’t budge. Feeling so acutely how thin the border between life and death are with this frail rabbit, the sturdiness of the tree gave me peace. So I did what I always do to try and process something immense and unprocessable. I wrote a poem.

how is it

that life can be as fragile as a leaf 

that browns and shatters to dust

and as solid as the tree,

towering over my soft body

how can it be as final as our last breath

and as dependable as spring

how can it move mountains, erupt and quake  

then whisper, mist and evaporate 

why is death its inseparable shadow

the dark, silent rest 

that creation needs in order to dream

tangled in one inseparable knot

love, heartbreak, fire, stone

some days I am desperate to understand

hovering over the pieces

scanning for relief

I don’t know if it matters 

but it feels better to try

my brain wants to pin it down, like a specimen on the wall, 

accurately labeled, meticulously preserved 

lifeless

to solve it is an illusion

of safety, of completion, 

with no room for growth

that’s not how life becomes the tree

layers of wood, patiently circling outward

reaching higher and higher

rooting deeper and deeper

with so many ideas

each branch, a prayer

touch me - i want to feel the sun

shine on my tenderest leaves

bake them green

give them life

for a little while