—KEEP IT UP AND GO ON

 

A Mouse Life 

 

The day I turn into a mouse, everything that came before disappears.  

So I scurry. I pause to smooth my whiskers. I pant just a little bit, wondering what to make of the world.  

There’s a peephole straight ahead, small as a shirt button, but I manage to squeeze my exoskeleton through it, as if I’m made of shapeless glue.  

On the other side there’s a family. A party going on. A boy at the end of the table leans over a cake littered with nine candles, blowing their flames to gray wisps as he makes his wish.  

At the other end is a woman, a mother maybe, who smokes a stick, blows a broken halo that breaks apart further once it hits the ceiling and dissolves into the spackling. 

That could mean something. 

Maybe there are cheers. Maybe there’s a future for him, this boy. It’s hard to understand or predict anything reasonably when you’re a mouse and everything else looms so large, while the clock on the wall stands still, petrified, =waiting for something to happen.