Rabbit Logic

why do I miss you? why now?
because when life red-lights & smoke-alarms,
my brain panic-scrolls for places
it remembers feeling safe —
like your orbit

psychology would say crisis = time machine,
cue the re-run of winter mornings
where I wept into Fredrik Backman paperbacks,
Earl Grey steam fogging up my pink glasses,
while I roasted your comically thunderous walk
down antiseptic hallways.

but you’re cold now —
packed in the mental graveyard
where I dump things I cannot re-hydrate;
like the ghosts of Virginia nights,
every scene where cutting someone down
reshaped me into a silhouette
I haven’t dared to trace.

why do I miss you? why now?
some days I forget the paint color
of my own front door, blank on the furniture map,
losing my name in a glitchy mirror —
but your voice loads in hi-def,
echoing in the miracle of you not turning
every syllable I say into a blade.

right now that miracle feels priceless.

I watched the Olympics live this year —
the entire golden hat trick —
yet it feels like several borrowed lifetimes back,
while I haggle with daylight-savings math
to see if it can gift me an extra hour
where I don’t hate my own reflection.

round and round I go —
same carnival of hurtful people,
same rigged games slick with déjà-vu prizes;
each loop whittles me to splinters,
and the emptier I get,
the louder the hi-def sounds.

why do I miss you? why now?
today I clocked the beanies on my rack,
wondered if my cheeks would be less fat in one now,
then pictured you in yours —
threw that thought against the wall like a live grenade.

would you say I look like hell?
does it even matter?
I don’t know how the rabbit got the gun,
only that the trigger tastes like not-eating
and I’m tired of hunger’s echo chamber.

I don’t like talking to people,
but I’d risk words with you —
because you never aimed them back at my chest.

I miss smiling in the wild.
I miss feeling rehearsed safety.
I miss when beanies were just beanies,
not guilt-ridden dysmorphia.

why do I miss you? why now?
maybe because remembering you costs less
than digging my own grave
beside everything I buried to survive.