She can swim,
but she’s not water,
so give her some grace.
Take it slow,
make the water
warm to your wrist.
Hold her back
legs together firmly,
feel the potential
of those muscles.
She’ll fix you
with her eye
while you lower her in.
Existential sorrow
and suffering.
She thinks
this is forever,
her sudden
sodden demotion.
You will feel monstrous.
A rabbit isn’t big,
ever, but wet
she is entirely different,
and now you know
how much she relies
on furry masquerade
for what little presence
she wields. What misery,
what danger we risk,
doing this, starting
to think about
what’s underneath.

Sara Eddy’s full-length collection, Ordinary Fissures, was released by Kelsay Books in May 2024. She is also author of two chapbooks, Tell the Bees from A3 Press in 2019, and Full Mouth from Finishing Line Press in 2020, and her poems have appeared in many online and print journals, including Threepenny Review, Raleigh Review, Sky Island, and Baltimore Review, among others. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with a white dog and a black cat.