The Rabbit in her Heart

In a countryside, green and idyllic full of oaks and pines, lived a free-spirited woman alone in a cottage. Many animals passed by as the seasons changed. One spring day a jackrabbit came hopping by. He paused to take note of the woman on her porch, then hopped his merry way along.

He visited her yard often, sniffing around to see what he could find, always one eye out for the woman. A bond had grown between the short distance of the two of them, but she dared not try to pet his fur, or beckon him to her lap, for she knew him to be wild... and wild she'd let him be.

One gray dawn within the mist she searched for the rabbit she had not seen since last he was chewing on some weed in her grassy yard. Her heart felt sad at the thought that he had wondered off, or had been taken by coyotes. Her mood hung heavy in a shadowed grief.

In the hush of evenings she sought him out, but no sign of the rabbit did she see. Through tears and sighs she learned to cope, but missed him so much. She felt his presence in daydreams, and in nighttime she created memories of her rabbit's bounding joy that would never fade.

With a sigh and a resolve she accepted her loss, but held him forever in her heart. Each spring she would hope anew that, perhaps, he would return... and so the daisies, and so the daffodils... and birds in the pines.

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