Eat Your Carrots

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Original Sin

When Karen told my father I’d pulled off
my rabbit’s tail, he asked, Did you? And I
said, Yes, though in truth it was Karen

who’d grabbed the tail and tugged and tugged
until it came loose in her hand. My father
slapped me hard, then said I’d been cruel,

and asked why I’d done it. I confessed I didn’t
know and took the strap for Karen’s crime.
In the days and weeks that followed, I never

questioned or accused Karen, and she never
acknowledged what she’d done or apologized.
We did not speak of her lie, or mine.

One morning at summer’s end I found my rabbit
dead in her pen. Her sweet body, already stiff,
lay among the uneaten carrots of atonement,

and where the tail had been, a small red circle,
an accusing eye, reminded me of my deception.
I wondered then and wonder still why I took

the blame for hurting the pet I’d loved. I only know
that once Karen said I’d done it and my father
looked at me as if I had, I was guilty,

as guilty as those unbaptized babies
in Purgatory. I must have understood even then
that I’d been born bad and the only reason

I hadn’t yanked off my rabbit’s tail was because
Karen got it first. Some part of me, the part
already destined for Hell, had wanted

that soft talisman that promised luck, wanted it
in my own hand, and wished I’d moved faster.