Bunny

Photo credit: Urban Rose Photo

"I like your bunny," I say. Diagonal on the trundle bed, Betsy stretches, grins and squints her eyes, face blushed with sleep. 

"This bunny eats people," she says, her stretch winding down, now sober eyes blink-blinking.

"No, it doesn't," I say, a perpetual fear of man-eating rodents arched in her eyebrows. She pets guard bunny's flopping ears.

"You can have this," she says. She pauses, lifts bun-bun to me.

"Ohhh," I sigh. 

"Don't pull on the ears," she says. She lays bunny in her lap and strokes the ears, "or they will be broken."

"Uh-huh," I stare, Betsy's pale green eyes round, earnest. She turns bunny and points.

"Because they are tied on. Here. The ears."

Photo credit: Urban Rose Photo

"Oh," I say, "yes."

"Jack made it for me."

Her eyes there, and my hands just reach on their own. She places bunny in them. I smile at the stumpy body, round head, voluminous ears. I stroke the ears and gaze at bunny. 

"And then he rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth," she says. "I love you forever. I like you for always. As long as I'm living my. baby. you'll. be." The words loll into the room. I stare at bunny then at her. 

"Yup," I say. 

"Emma said that to me last night," she says.

"Yup," I say, and in the long moment I recall I've never read that book to Betsy. Not once. Just Emma. And there on the trundle bed, a universe blooms and spills between us, tender affection handed down from Emma, down from Jack, down, down, down to me. There I am holding bunny and the whole entire world in my hand.

Photo credit: Urban Rose Photo