Myxomatosis

Inside the wire cage are two small rabbits, eating from a pile of picked grass. One blinks. The girl thinks it’s at her but can’t be sure as its eyes dart around a lot. The eyes are deep black, almost all pupils. Her mother flicks up the latch on the door of the cage and lets her scoop up one of the bunnies and hold it. She feels its heat through the knit of her school jumper. It scratches her hand with its claws, makes it bleed a bit, but she doesn’t mind. The cage comes home in the back of the car and they put it at the side of the house, under the apricot tree with its branches widely outstretched around itself, starting to lean closer to the ground with all the new, tight-mouthed green fruit. She gets the tin lid that’s lying among the grass left in the bottom of the cage and fills it up with water and picks more grass for them. Her mother says the grocer can give her boxes of cabbage and lettuce leaves to feed them.