Mice
I need something else, something other than the low-down hum of silence blowing through my wide-awake bedroom like the ghost of all the roads I never took, the heater dead, the night frozen stiff at six below.
I’m lying here in this fever-cabin with the taste of my favourite Mexican place, Las Iguanas, still rolling in my stomach like a bad dream, the refried beans twisting away like a volcano on the verge, the blast imminent.
but worse is that holy nothing humming through the soft and endless, keeping sleep far off like a woman already gone down the line.
back in seventy-six, my mother handed me a conch shell and said, put it to your ear, hear the sea, hear the whole rolling ocean in there — and I did, and I heard it crashing forever. but now this room is like a shell, walls closing in, nothing but stillness and the ache in my back from Tuesday when that bastard on Milton Road ran the light and crumpled my bicycle like a love letter nobody wanted, frame buckled, me flying holy through the air.
I need a woman with strong hands to rub menthol into the knots I can’t reach, her breath on my neck louder than any sea from my mother’s shell.
I climb out of bed, bare feet on cold boards, and light a cigarette just to hear the match scratch alive. I stand by the back door sucking smoke, and I listen to the snow settle soft outside like a benediction. then I’m back under the covers with nicotine ghosts dancing on clean sheets, waiting again for the thermostat’s little click of mercy.
but wait, something new.
little feet, a crazy jitterbug across the ceiling, pitter-pitter-patter, not the wind, not the heater, too quick, too alive. mice? Christ, mice in the attic, the whole frantic scrabble of them, while I lie here wrecked. or maybe a bird trapped up there beating its wings against my insomnia. I stare up at the Chinatown paper shade glowing faint from the streetlamp, the silence finally cracked open, the night suddenly full of tiny, frantic little heartbeats dancing right above my head.
sleep will come quickly now,
nothing to regret by morning,
payday tomorrow.
