=trick rabbit=

Trick Rabbit

I’m sitting on a red couch trying not to be noticed, but it’s hard to go unnoticed on a red couch. Somehow I’ve gotten invited to this party, mistaken as someone who can either bring or withhold the spring. How did that happen? Who would ever make such a ridiculous promise? What kind of fool would ever believe it? If a detective were to suddenly materialize out of thin air and ask me what I said last Thursday between the hours of such and such, I’d surely have to hesitate. To hem and haw. Who wouldn’t? How can anyone account for all the moments of one’s life? How can we possibly prove our innocence in the face of all the people we’ve disappointed. The detective reaches into an inner pocket of his jacket and pulls out a long list of unfamiliar names. Who are they? Victims, eyewitnesses, accusers, suspects, friends or foes? He hands me an old photograph I’ve seen many times before. In the photograph, I’m sitting on a red couch, not the one I’m sitting on now, but one just like it. I could swear, though, that the last time there was a rabbit in the photo. Where is the rabbit now? I’m poring over the picture, from corner to corner, top to bottom. I look up, trying to keep any evidence of the missing rabbit out of my eyes. “That's what we’d like to know,” the detective says, answering my unasked question. But for all his bluff and bluster up to now, it’s at that moment that I know for sure that he doesn’t see it, doesn't see the rabbit, that he really hasn’t got a clue.