It rains, until it doesn’t.
The nurse asks questions and I
have no answers. I sketch a rabbit
with bloodied teeth. What did it eat
to stain its mouth so? Later, I draw
the crest of one cloud shoaling into
the trough of another. A cold sun,
light running like open wounds down
my arms. I stay. The ward smells of my
sweat and someone else’s urine.
It doesn’t rain, until it does.
I see the rabbit in the window before
it sees me, and I sketch it again.
A scared thing, crouching inside
that other skin. I sketch its hands, first.
Fingers coiled, shaking, as claws.
Tracing the shell of one ear, there.
Its eye, here. And look,
it still has blood
on its teeth.