rabbit paws pressed into damp loam. pastel cabbage roses gnawed down to their nubby stems. a velvet-lined burrow embroidered with childrens book illustrations, beatrix potter after a fever dream, drawn in trembling crayon. cotton tails dipped in powdered sugar. antique plush toys slumped against peeling nursery wallpaper patterned with celadon vines. a half-eaten biscuit forgotten in a meadow. rabbit is a fairy-tale told by a creature who has never seen a human, yet somehow understands our longing. soft-focus innocence, but one step too close and the mirage flickers: beneath the fluff lies a pulse, a musk, a tiny heartbeat thrumming with hunger. the opening is a delicate veil of carrot, pale and translucent as lace curtains, a vegetal halo glowing peach like the blush on a porcelain doll's cheek. violets flutter in with their shy purple dust, eraser shavings, schoolgirl notebooks, the lilac tint of powdered mochi skin. and then, the earth: crumbly, brown, humid. the scent of roots torn from their beds, a rabbit’s frantic little kicks sending soil into the air like incense. hints of hay and sun-warmed straw cast a pastoral halo, but moss creeps into the dream, chilly and green as a childhood memory that suddenly feels too vivid. innocence meets rot, tenderness brushing against the uncanny like fingertips against a cracked toy.
midway, rabbit grows startlingly tactile, furred, warm, almost breathing. a ghost of almond milk and sweetened cream wafts up like a lullaby, but something animalic trembles underneath, a shy musk that feels like the inside of a burrow: humid, safe, slightly salty. i am reminded of petting zoos, of baby blankets that still smell faintly of milk, of fairytale creatures that lure children deeper into forests because they’re just so soft, so gentle, so seemingly harmless. rabbit is softness, yes, but softness with secrets. powdered petals collapse into a whisper of woody stems, a thimble-sized world shrinking further into its mossy warren. the dry-down is milky, cozy, almost edible, yet always shadowed by the earth that birthed it. a childhood dream collapsing into compost, a bedtime story turning its last page as the forest grows dark. neither gourmand nor green, neither fully animal nor fully plush toy, rabbit occupies a liminal burrow between innocence and instinct. a tale of sweetness nibbled at the edges, of quiet paws and trembling whiskers, of comfort tainted by the knowledge that nature itself is tender and ravenous.
songs for rabbit: size too small by sufjan stevens, all the pretty little horsies by current 93, tears for an eastern girls by nature and organisation, wicker man song by nature and organisation, sketch for a summer by the durutti column, better than you by swans, futile devices by sufjan stevens, morning sun by dave bixby, world of her own by the wake, lieberflusse by love spirals downwards, ipomoea by love spirals downwards.
