Rabbit Test

My period is late
the week I acquire a pair of spring rabbits for my children.
Sisters, I am assured. There will not be more. Not from their quarter, at least.

For me, it is one of those worried-not-worried weeks that women seldom share:
a week of frowning at innocent gussets, casual mental arithmetic
(When did it happen? Could we manage?), and declining wine at dinner.

Meanwhile, in what feels like a whole other brain, I go
about my business, which now includes boning up on Oryctolagus cuniculus domesticus:
binkies, flops, flystrike, stasis. Vienna gene, ruby-eye, extreme ruby cast.

If you pin them on their backs, I learn, bunnies will go limp, feigning death.
Perhaps if I do the same, this blessing will pass my lintel by?
Or will I be called upon to rise to the task of unconditional love one more time?

The white-whiskered sisters maintain an immaculate silence.
I cannot help but feel they were dealt me like a Tarot card,
these porcelain-faced priestesses of Ēostre.

When I take them back to their cloister at night, their
tiny claws scrabble for purchase at my sore breasts
even as Schrödinger's blastocyst scrabbles at the black box inside.

Three days past due, it is time to see what trick I will pull from this hat.
The pharmacy ladies wink and wish me luck.
But I am spared the need for it: the next morning I find a single ruby eye

gazing benignly at me from the white sheets. I give a silent sigh.
I have twisted free from the briar patch.
I can mothball my monkey-mind accountant (How old will I be when it graduates?), along with the smallest car seat.

In the kitchen, the innocent sisters take herbs from my hand,
collapsed from portent to mere mammalhood.
I cradle a racing heart against my palm, kiss a vein-latticed ear.

These mouths I can feed. This blessing I can manage.
No business of mine, this part of me that is sad to have fumbled the prestige;
this hidden hand that cradles a pang of loss.