The Mouse

Maybe there isn't a mouse after all. Maybe it's the squirrels living in the holly tree that's grown against the house, banging against the sloping roof. It almost doesn't matter because if I believe there's a mouse, then the damage is done. I creep around like I'm being watched, clear away leftovers like something is about to pounce and listen so furiously in the silent dead of night until the blood pumping through my head deafens me.

There's something in all this, I'm sure. Not quite irony, not quite destiny. You see I started as a mouse. When I was young, too young to remember I announced that I was a mouse and from that day until I was a teen, that's what my family called me. Mouse. It still sjavascript:void(0)lipped out of my father's mouth now and then after the separation when we saw each other less and I would chastise him- I'm thirteen- not a child anymore dad, don't call me that. It's melted to distant memories now: The mousehouse- my cardboard box home with windows and a door where I'd sit for hours on end. There's a mouse sewn on the Christmas stocking that my mum made- probably the last visible sign of the story and I wonder if I don't put it down in words somewhere, does it simply disappear, evaporating into the air and drifting away forever.
How many other things will I forget? How many memories have gone already? Now that I have children I want to capture my childhood up: all those ideas and stories and smells and colours and stuff them in a box. One day I can pull it all out, tattered and worn and lay it all out on the floor to show them; faded and loved.