questions to avoid

I never did like weeding. Getting dirt under my fingernails, harvesting vegetables. The bee buzz and the sunshine and the monotony.

So why is it so easy to glorify now? Wandering through the verdant patch. Dragging my hands through greenery all pressing in around me. Snacking on string beans straight from the vine. Washing the hostile orange from my arms after harvesting a bunch of tomatoes from plants desperate under the weight of their own bounty, yet loathe to give it up all the same.

(It's their fault, to be sure.)

Mouseket

I had a pet mouse. It started out twitchy-whiskered and friendly, but it did not take long for its disposition to sour with neglect. It got depressed and surly. It began to attempt to commit suicide: it leapt from the top bunk; it presented itself meekly to the cat for consumption (who turned up his nose at a morsel that would not twitch and beg for its life). Finally it went on a hunger strike.

Perhaps I should have intervened? Given it whiskey in its water bottle and a tiny pad of paper and mouse-sized pen?

It is buried in a shallow grave in the back garden, its grave marked with a brick.

Music

When I woke up in the middle of last night (a common occurrence among the gravid) there was a strange humming sound in the air. I wrote it off as a new tune the radiators were rehearsing and headed for the bathroom. Perched there on the edge of the sill was a row of 9 small yellow beetles, distinctly humming the oddly haunting tune. I watched from the doorway. When they finished they filed down the wall and into a crack between the floor tiling and the wall.