Inspired from a friend: http://www.thesil.ca/life-lessons-from-a-mouse
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There’s a mouse dying in my floorboard
And I can hear it in between the wood and cement
It is only a temporary problem
Scratching, scrawling, wailing and hoping someone can hear it
I can
And I do
And I sit here and type this
And I think about what it thinks about me
And I stamp my feet on the ground
And it stamps back
Its little feet mangled and worn
And I write a little more and its squeals a little too
I put my ear to the floor and introduce myself,
“Hello, mouse – I’m Kacper”
No answer
“Sorry to meet you like this”
No answer
“I wish I could help, I do”
A nail bites across the cement
“What do you mean”
Many more swipes against the ground
“Excuse me but”
Pounding, pounding, pounding
“Now you don’t have to interrupt me”
No answer
“Thank you”
No answer
“About helping – yes, well you see this is my home and my floor and I can’t tear it up for you or else where would I go”
Fumbling on the other side of the hardwood
“Well that’s true – you would go away when free, yes, and I could go away for a bit too, but I’m comfortable here”
Underneath my fingertips, a few faithful pats
“It is my home”
A light jab
“And my heart, as they say, is here”
Biting against wood
“And so will yours in time”
Mad gorging
“No need to be so furious about it”
Swipes that are short of bringing the house down
“I’ll talk to you again when you gain some reason”
No answer
“Here, I’ll play music for you – that always helps”
The scratches become a sort of careful limbo
They vibrate on the wave of sound
Matching the beat like a season dancer
“You like classical, eh”
I turn the music louder
And I’m swaying my feet
And there’s a tap-tap-tapitty-tap
A slide, a wiggle, a twirl in place
A one-two-three, a one-two-three
Underneath me
And I increase the volume as loud as my speakers can go
The whole room is shaking
As though it were caught in a scared routine
Done just because everyone else was doing it
But the soft stabs against cement cannot be heard anymore
I can’t hear anything but the music
Not even myself
And I fall asleep somehow
At sometime
In some place in my room
And in the morning the sun rises and the radio plays a traditional violin and the scratch-scratches are no more
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