mouse 

he feasted in the dark.
a hole nibbled in the bottom of the bag of rice.
bites taken from a ripe apple. he came alone
& told no one else where he went. 
the other mice scoured what was left
of the grain in the fields before
the farmers started tilling to prepare for new seeds
but he had found a portal near the kitchen sink
to enter through. 
i have been like him. selfish & telling myself,
"tonight is the last time." all the photos
of the moon. a pocket knife with someone else's
name etched into its torso. 
winter had just broken 
& the spring gave the mouse ideas 
about his next life. he ate with dreams
of becoming a bird. he imagined that 
all the horror he'd seen was part 
of the earth & that the sky must be holy.
in the morning i found his droppings in little zig-zags
across the utensil drawer & across the stove.
scrubbed everything clean over & over.
the chatter of knives. i tried to tell you that
i wanted to have a space of my own. wept one afternoon
about the car i sold when we first got together.
everything seemed possible then. now, i am running
through cracks in the roof towards any source of light.
i miss the apartment in the mountains 
where no one visited & my teeth 
were clean. we bought traps. finally caught him.
his eyes like blueberries. shiny & scared.
i walked him a mile out into the fields.
opened the door of the trap & told him,
"there are more places just like mine." i was not
thinking of him. i was thinking of me.
home has never been something planned
but rather where i end up. the fissure through which
i arrive. the bones i have chewed through.
i missed him when he did not return 
the next morning. still, i cleaned the forks & the spoons
as if he had been here. saw my reflection,
that of a scurrying creature, on the cutlery's necks.