The black rabbit stared at the world below, unable to move or breathe. The skyline was an open, bright blue that expanded off into infinity, melding with yellows and greens.
The rabbit’s heart was pounding.
The rabbit’s ears were twitching violently.
The rabbit’s nostrils shrunk and grew in a hectic rhythm as the flickering light of its eyes stared at nothing. Tears were pooling down its face.
Why was it crying? Was it simply the outward wounds?
No, it was not some outer pain that tormented the poor creature. The green stained with red. The silence was unbearable.
Abandoned by those it most trusted, marked by its indelible shadow, the poor creature was hurt, weak, and alone. It only ever wanted to find its way back to the home it never had. So it chased a trail of blood to the top of a hill where it became the soul survivor of its biggest tragedy.
“I caught a black rabbit.”
I stood in the doorway of the old shack. Blood stained my pale arms as I was cradling a bleeding little creature with whiskers and downcast ears.
My mother looked up, unfazed. Tear stains filled the wrinkles of her expression as she silenced her stomach. She hadn’t eaten in days. We all hadn’t.
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“What happened?”
“There was a pack of rabbits, brown, spotted with white. A fox got to them before I could. I couldn’t do anything to help them. They lived together, died together, all of them. All but him. He was hurt at one of those mini mountains when I found him like this.”
“Why did you save him?”
“I’m sorry, mommy, I know I shouldn’t have–not right now. I just… I couldn’t leave him.”
Mom inspected the rabbit. Its heavy eyes were filled with a shadow edging closer to their gleaming rim. Innocence lost. Those eyes were in the limbo between hollowness and life. Did it want to be saved? If it didn’t, would that really matter?
“You have a choice, Ou. Two of them, to be exact. Death is a part of life, so it is more beneficial, easy, even practical to put the poor creature out of its misery. And yet something in you compelled you to pick up the rabbit and bring him here. What was it, Ou? Was it compassion, or perhaps just a calculated risk to fill that emptiness in you? What will it be, Ou? Will you save him, or will you kill him?”
What my mother never told me was that there was a third choice. You can save a lone and weak outcast, nurse it back to health, but in the end, the walls around it are not its home. They are just a shack, temporary, consumed by moth and rust. It’s home is out there–the wild and unknowable world on that hill with a bright and open sky. The longer you hold it here, the less it is truly here, for it longs for the world just outside the window. The rabbit is a reflection of me. It shows the one who understood me more than all others. We don’t decide when wounds heal, when time runs out, so all we can do is live with the time we’ve been given. I just wish I had appreciated the things, the people, the brotherhood, the love, laughter, hope, happiness, even the tears, before it was all gone. I wish I had truly lived before the life I knew was over. I caught a black rabbit, but now I have to let it go.