There was another mouse in our apartment again, 

I saw it scurry out from under the couch in broad daylight.  

We made eye contact as if agreeing that maybe 

we are both in the wrong home.

My boyfriend set up a fence of empty erect boxes 

Leaving only one opening lined with glue traps. 

He tried to scare it out from behind the bookshelf, by banging 

a broom against the wall but the mouse knew better. 

Later we looked back and saw it caught, scared and squirming 

around on the trap, and it was small like a baby.  

The week we’d came home from visiting his parents in PA, we found 

a mouse rotting in the kitchen from early May’s warm weather. 

It tried to chew itself off the trap. There were paper pieces 

of survival everywhere. The whole apartment smelled like a fight. 

Another time, we found one stuck to a trap behind the fridge for what 

was a while, we guessed it expelled its guts through its butt for glory, 

But when we bent down to get a closer look, we saw fetuses. Three pairs 

of blank eyes staring back at us in a pool of dried blood. 

Before we fling every carcass off of our roof as a ritual, 

we name them while we turn a blind eye to the ways we are the same.