When I was barely 8 years old

On the threshold of prepubescence and childhood

I visited my best friend’s family farm

That day both a rabbit and dog gave birth

Being young and naive I held the babies

Mere moments after exiting the safety

Of the womb

I cradled the babies

Gave them sweet kisses on nearly hairless heads

And returned them quickly to their mothers

Exhausted from birth and plump with milk

I returned later to find the rabbit mother

Had eaten her children

More gruesome a sight

Than Kronos consuming his own

I was told that my hands had killed them

My scent had made them foreign

Stranger to their mother

Who in her maternal mercy

Slaughtered them

I returned to the puppies

One I’d named Bandit

Who had a perfect brown patch around his neck

What I thought resembled a bandana

But should have seen as more a noose

For he did not survive the first hour of birth

He failed to thrive after tumbling into this world

That day I learned the power

That even my sweet, well-intentioned hands

Could have

My compassion was a harbinger of death

And I have loved cautiously

Ever since