Boil a Rabbit

Boil a Rabbit

by Tricia Louvar

A live rabbit dropped into a kettle of boiling water. Watch. Fur folds in on itself with each roll up, each flare of water. The cadence of bubbles is steady like a marching band in step on Main Street. And the rabbit's eyes graduate in color of a solunar table with each slash of finding its blood turn to syrup. You can be no puppet master by luring it out with kitchen tongs. Steady, steady your gaze. That's right. Right there. Don't take your eyes off its squirming, its "restlessness," its in-place quiver in a circular motion.
     It'll give up. It has to.
     Don't let any of that image go. Now, take this image and pull it out from your head. Good, got it in your hands? Next comes the tricky part.
     Pull it so long like a tape measure that it becomes a filament to which it hangs loose and drapes from your hand to the floor. Start at one spot on your head, like your forehead, and start wrapping it around. Tighter. Go tighter as you circumnavigate your head to the point you cannot bear it. The thread should cut into your skin, leaving gouges, and droplets of blood running here and there. Also, be sure to cut off your airways as well. Now, stay like that. Walk around. Pretend as if everything is normal, even as you go lightheaded.
     There. There: that is how you lose your baby.   

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Originally published in BURST, an online literary magazine of micro-fiction. Spring 2009.