our compost
fertile scraps

**

sweet dreams little brain

be soft now and feather-edged

it’s bed time now

so let it all snowglobe down to the bottom

dust the ground

you can pick up the stuff that’s big enough

to hold in the morning

for now let the ceiling be your ocean

(cheesy, I know, but just do it)

feel the waves swell and sink

swish and foam

let the seabreeze cool you down

let the sand warm you up

let the water wash your braintoes

wash your brainlegs and your brainbody

and even your brainbrain

float and bob

immersed and untethered

in your ceilingsea

**

There is a mouse who eats bones and she lives inside a coffin. “What a good place to live” she thinks every time she sniffs out a new bone to nibble on. Though the supply is not endless, it is ample. And ample is quite enough for a young mouse in a coffin.

Of course, the mouse cannot see. There is no light. In fact she has never seen any light. She was born after the coffin was already in the ground. Her mother snuck in while the funeral guests were making awkward attempts at conversation by the cheese platter. A close scrape with a shuffling foot startled her, and she scurried off to safety in the velvet darkness. Soon enough, the coffin was closed and by then there was no escape. She tried chewing through the velvet, but the hard wood was too much. Defeated, she lay down and rubbed her nose into a soft corner.

Soon after the darkness came, the mother gave birth to a litter of mice pups. At first they all lived. Then some of them died. Eventually the mother died too and now only one mouse pup remains. This mouse pup likes the smell of velvet and the taste of bones. She is a very lucky mouse indeed.

The coffin has one corner for sleeping, one corner for “daily undesirables,” and another corner for artifacts. The fourth corner is where the mouse keeps the bones of her mother and siblings. When she is feeling lonely she rubs her whiskers on the little ribs and the delicate skulls. The sound is small but it fills the whole coffin. And it’s hard to be lonely in a coffin filled with sounds.

Sometimes the mouse likes to sit in the space between the two shoes. With her nose poking out between the soles, both sides of her body rub against the pant legs. Velvet on her stomach and silk on both sides. When she sits here she can think clearly about the things she has done and the things she will do. If she has brought a bit of bone, she can chew on it in peace.