Mighty mouse

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