Kelly & Mina

The rabbit's ears open like little wallets as Kelly cleans them.
Mina (she's a girl-rabbit) fights and tries to squirm away.
If she lived
with other rabbits, they'd lick the lint out of her ears
more pleasantly, instead of Kelly with a Q-tip,
jabbing like a vicious cloud while Mina squirms.
She lifts the long downward-pointed ears like limp leaves
that need encouragement. She doesn't love you, I explain
to Kelly, who throws a bloody Q-tip at me in response.
I persist: Mina only tolerates you because you feed her.
She knows you are not an ideal roommate. Kelly insists
that this is the difficult part of their otherwise idyllic relationship.

Later that night, after making love(to Kelly, not the rabbit)
I saw another rabbit (without a Q-tip protruding from its ear,
to my relief) sprinting over the sidewalk in front of the video store.
It didn't stop to check out the latest releases.
It may have been searching frantically for a mate
to lick its ears, but I think it was simply trying to escape
from the supermarket parking lot, a frightening place.
I had just returned a movie about a futuristic post-apocalypse world
in which no invasion of supernatural forces had saved the earth
from human intrusion. Not one rabbit had appeared in the movie.
The few remaining human characters spent a lot of time
throwing colorful explosives at each other
and never stopped to lick one another clean.