The life of a mouse

during the coldness of the winter of my life,

i caught a mouse

and i pondered to myself, what is the empathy i feel

for a life so small and pesky

considering how i grew up agnostic to life's value

being involved in the deaths of a great many pest

so too did i consider being involved in the lives of a great many

big folk--small too--and i would wonder, what value do each of their lives hold?

against this mouse, who i may have discovered in the trap many days late

covered in its own shit and shivering, subsisting off the sugar coated trap

i had laid as an act of mercy

yet i caused the suffering of a small life

and perhaps i continue to cause the suffering of many small lives

that i entwine with and untwine with as the years trickle by into a stream

that swells into a rushing river

i find myself trapped and covered in shit, too

subsisting off the meager penance afforded by serving others

wiping their cups of energy, wiping their shit stains off the toilets

and i go home, as my shit sits in the neglected broken toilet

i hug the pained body of my broken lover, neglected just the same

as we pour our pain into each other, only to ignore what the basin has collected

this, too, a broken, shit filled toilet that festers as we continue to empty ourselves into it

the ones we love far away, my supposition that they can't stand my smell

as i can't stand it myself. he, in his absent mind, who would torture a mouse

must certainly be host to naught but rot and filth

the light within paltry in comparison to the deluge of dark

the dark that overtakes, the dark that bears complacency to itself

the dark that inures to the shit smell, the smoke burns, the dissolution of safety and security

yet, here i lay, content to suffer, it seems, to crack my knuckles until

i can't feel much else

much like before, when the lives i knew rushed on into time's river

leaving me behind to ruminate and resist the calls to join them

my hand grips the pen as tightly as it might my own neck

but never tight enough to deprive myself of sweet sorrow

never quite taking hold of my own truth in the way that might finally get me to act

to tighten the grip, to pull the trigger, take the leap into the unknown

yet i persist, as a great many others so do

clawing their way out of their own shit crusted cages, seeking clean teeth and clean sheets

when i released the lethargic mouse from one doom to the next

i wondered when my next doom might come, and if it may be the last i would know

and i remind myself that there is much that i don't know, and never will

i just suppose that that has to be okay.

i just hope that that mouse is okay.

i just fear that i will never be okay.