This Is How It Ends – Mary Hanrahan

I give you all the tomatoes fresh from the vine. Grown from tiny fingerprints and earthworm castings. The carrots did not take this year, so each week brings a new bag of dirty orange sticks to throw out into your favorite sunlit spot beneath the mother of all willow trees. You are a wild hair on the back of the dog he can’t lick into submission. He watches me watch you nibble while the low whine simmers deep in his throat betraying his ache for the chase. I pay him off with treats shaped like t-bones and it’s back to quiet time spent with my Darth Vader coffee mug and you, hare extraordinaire. Every morning I wait for you to come to the table with darting eyes and long satellite ears searching for the deft descent of a Peregrine or Harrier. I make a wager with myself that if you make it; I make it too. We, the prey, always alert to the possibility of a swift end to the story.

 

 

 

 

Mary is a writer living in Michigan. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Ashland University.  Her work is forthcoming in Ellipsis Zine, 8 Poems, Ghost City Review, and elsewhere.