hoppy's_children raze i don't know how many of them there are, but they live on my street. i met one of her daughters this morning. i caught her eating her breakfast minutes after i'd finished mine. i watched her from across the street and said, "i knew your mother. you look just like her." tomorrow i'll start looking out my back door again. just in case she decides to pay me a visit while flexing a bit of emotional muscle memory passed down by the rabbit who raised her under cover of devotion and repurposed pastureland. 220426 ... raze today she was a few strides east of where i spotted her the first time. just standing there. her back turned to me. i grabbed my camera, but she was gone by the time i made it to the door. still. i like knowing she's around. 220516 ... raze there are two of them. i know that now. 220523 ... raze i found her in the backyard. she was chewing on damp grass. her sister wasn't with her. my gut tells me they're both lady bunnies. maybe i'm wrong. but when i'm as sated as i was right then, i listen to my stomach. something tells me she does the same thing. she wasn't in the corner her mother favoured. she was beside the garage. there's more white in her coat than i thought there was, and enough mahogany in her eyes to drown in. i need to be more vigilant. i don't want to miss her the next time she comes around. 220526 ... raze my dad was about to turn right onto kildare this morning. it's a bad corner. the street parking makes it impossible to see what's coming the other way. he had the window down so he could hear what his eyes couldn't hone in on. he saw one of hoppy's kids on the road. she was inches from the car. "you gotta get onto the grass," he said. "it isn't safe for you out here. there are cars that might not see you." she stood there. she listened to what he had to say. then she took his advice. she ran onto george's property. he's a retired law professor who lives a few houses down from us. live to hop another day. 220530 ... raze i guess i already knew hoppy had two children. i found out a year ago, back when she was still alive. i wrote about it here. then my brain erased that bit of information when i wasn't paying attention. sometimes it's good to forget things like that. you get to smile a little wider when two small lives brush up against yours and step in for a wayward memory. 220603 ... raze one of them was moving away from the sun without her sister. she stretched her legs, leaning into what was left of the waning daylight that held her in its breadbasket with all the wonder of a whispered prayer. 220622 ... raze she was on our landlord's front lawn. she found a nice pocket of shade and sat there for fifteen or twenty minutes. the passing cars and barking dogs and dancing birds and rummaging squirrels didn't spook her one bit. a woman walked by half-shouting into her cell phone about nothing. that was where she drew the line. she ran for cover so she wouldn't have to listen to any more of the lopsided conversation. 220623 ... raze i hadn't seen her since the fourth_of_july_fireworks. today the rain brought her out from wherever she'd been hiding. she wanted to test the ground beneath her feet. "still solid," she thought. "and slick with tears that fell from a face i couldn't see." a black squirrel blew by and skipped across the vacant driveway. something fluttered above her head. a fragment of my mother's wedding dress. leucoma salicis. i stepped out onto the porch to get a better look at the two of them dining on a few morsels of god's green earth before they took their leave. 220727 ... raze i looked out a window. and there she was. every time i tiptoed into that room to take another look, she was a little farther to the right. "i missed you," i whispered, my lips almost touching the glass. "i'm glad you're still here." she hasn't moved since. 220904 ... raze after a long time away, she's been here six nights out of the last seven. her colours have changed so much. i wasn't sure it was still her at first. but she's let me know. last night she ran. not to get away from me. to get closer. we admired each other for as long as it took a few breaths to pass between us. when we'd said what we had to say, i watched her walk through a ragged hole at the bottom of the fence. she's always in my prayers. now she gets to hear me say them. 230917 ... raze she was in my bedroom a little after one in the morning. she turned left and made a move for the window. then i lost her. sometimes_i_see_things_that_aren't_there. and sometimes they comfort me. 231111 what's it to you? who go blather from