The day of the truck crash, someone drove me to church,
A few days before the new year, I saw a fox
in my arms the teddy bear the firefighters gave me,
carrying a rabbit in its mouth as it crossed the asphalt
it had been raining, which is why we hydroplaned
your dad’s headlights caught its dusty terracotta fur
a word I learned much later, as my dad diagrammed the accident
it felt like an omen – what does a fox with a rabbit mean?
the sun was shining as I entered the hall of the church
I thought it might mean we’d eat well this year
every day after that, whenever I rode in the car,
though it reminded me how, once, a rabbit got stuck
I hyperfocused on the tilt of the fuzzy backseat under me
in the fence of our garden and strangled there
I often gripped the notch in the door or my seatbelt
I saw it the next morning, tried not to look too closely
as the car lurched on the country roads near home
though I had become used to the small dead things
and there’s a hazy memory where I told my mom
my cats hunted, then scattered across the back deck
to drive safely, and she told me to calm down.