mice

i tell you i don't know why i feel
like an avalanche today. the sky is saying, "i am going
to kill you." grey with a chance
of bricks. with a chance of door knocking.
a former lover in the drive way 
with a bucket of worms.
at the pet shop you ask to look
at the animals before we go. i always want to take
them all home. let them run wild in the house.
destroy my little floor board heaven. 
sometimes when we stand in the court yard
of the art museum we hear 
yelling from the jail a block away.
i always want to know what kind of yelling
it is but the cacophony of car horns
& police faces make it hard to tell. 
of course there is a difference in what
the walls mean. in the cage of mice
we see the flock eating the face of a dead one. 
they swarm him. it feels almost religious.
like "here is how we take the dead."
the shop workers are mortified
when we see it. they ferry the body,
half-gone, away. outside it is still not raining yet
even though the sky looks
like it wants to break so badly. 
i do too. i want to break so badly. run wild.
knock on people's doors & ask them
how many pet stores we are inside.
the snakes & the tortoises. the people
with hands. the people who learn to stand
on the ceiling at night. the skeleton
of the mouse. little wind chime.
what do the other mice say one another
in the wake, now knowing 
any one of them could be next.
is this how we see each other? 
the mice scramble on top of one another.
i want it to rain. i want it to pour 
so that we can get it over with.
the soaking & the sky shriek. instead
it does not storm. even the trees hold
their breath. at home i stand in the bathroom
to count my fingers, making sure
they're all there.