—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.
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