When I came here with my twig and my bindle napkin,
you were leaning against the baseboard molding flipping that coin,
your bowler hat tilted forward, huge ears flopping out the back.
My cousin Jerry introduced us.
You said, “I hear you wanna get some cheese.”
You taught me the arts of burglary.
“Gotta move fast,” you said. “Keep those legs spinning.
Never mind that frying pan. They’ll miss if you keep moving.
Run that cat right into the wall.”
Kitchen tiles bashed to bits and splinters all around me,
I always kept running.
Late at night, tucked into our matchboxes,
you would whisper to me about the big score.
“We’ll get that wheel of cheese one day.
Just you wait and see.
We’ll bust into that refrigerator
and take off with the whole damn thing.”
No wheel in the sky for you.
You believed what you could see in the light of the open door.
I knew better than to talk too much,
or you would’ve laughed at me,
but I was always a bit philosophical.
I knew there had to be more to life
than dragging crumbs back to our hole.
Even bigger, sweeter crumbs.
The whole thing gets old.
And, no, I don’t know if that thing in the night sky is actually a wheel of cheese.
But I do miss it,
fieldmouse outside, hunkered down in the hay,
chewing bits of corn and chaff,
a sprig hanging out the corner of my mouth.
I don’t think you’d understand,
having lived your whole life scurrying between two walls,
but I gotta keep on running.
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