Mice

I need something else. something other than the static quiet. the heater is dead. the night frozen stiff outside, six below and dropping.

I’m lying here in this wide-awake bedroom, grease from Las Iguanas still rolling in my stomach, a bad engine. refried beans burn a hole through the gut, sour and heavy. but worse is the quiet, hours of it stretching out, keeping sleep far off down the line.

back in seventy-six, my mother handed me a conch shell. put it to your ear, she said. hear the sea. and I heard the water crashing inside the bone. but now this room is the shell, walls closing in, nothing moving but the ache in my lower spine from Tuesday. that bastard on Milton Road ran the light, buckling my bike frame into junk, throwing me face-first into the pavement.

I need a woman with rough palms to dig menthol into the knots under my shoulder blades. her breath on my skin. louder than the noise in the bone.

I swing out of bed, my soles on the grain of the floorboards. I strike a match just to hear the sulphur scratch alive. I stand by the back door sucking smoke, watching the snow pile up against the glass like salt. then back under the blankets. the ash smell sticking to the sheets. I wait for the thermostat to snap.

then the sound comes, but something different.

scratching, a sharp scraping across the plaster above my head. not the timber settling, it’s too fast, too alive. mice in the crawlspace, claws digging into the rafters while I lie here wrecked. or a starling trapped under the eaves, beating its wings against the joists. I stare up at the shade glowing yellow from the streetlamp.

the quiet is gone.

tarmac in the spine,
mice chewing the insulation,
payday tomorrow.