By Tatum Spriester | October 4, 2020

Clarence the Feed Mouse

designed to be devoured

bred for the sustenance of another

for he was not his own.

deaths of brother beings

in the midst of our pandemic

his was a primitive death

one without drama or humanity.

a robust, classical name for a delicate creature

but a death without witness,

for he was not his own.

how to explain to a child

who loves bees

and dreams of alligators

and doesn’t even understand the numbers on a news screen,

that the mouse that wasn’t made to be hers is

dead.

bang on the cage as much as you want,

it makes our mouse no less dead.