Burn

Back in college,
My roommate and I had a mouse problem.
One time, he found a nest of baby pink mice and
Threw them like tiny pieces
of wet bubble gum into the fireplace.
As each one would fly into the cinders and flames,
I could see them flash like exploding matchheads;
making my own skin blister and itch.
When I was six, I put my entire right hand under
my father’s barbeque and the callous pads of my fingers,
worn from climbing over fences and digging under the trees’ roots,
stuck to the black metal as I pulled away.
I watched the flesh melt like wax and drop liquid fire
into the rabbit cage below.
The hot skin landed on the rabbit, and the animal’s scream,
so foreign, painful-
forced me to cry.
I never did tell my parents what happened.
Years later, when I told our neighbor,
Jacob Foer, how we rid the mice,
he looked at me with a rabbit’s voice, a small creature
that only makes noise when it screams, by instinct.
My roommate burned those mice, and I said nothing.
My apathy salutes while genocide is justified by fallacious logic.
“How else were we going to get rid of the mice, Aaron?”
Jacob does not talk
to me anymore.  It must be his innate instincts passed onto him
by his descendents.
And now, I itch to be heard.  There is a wailing rabbit
in a cocker spaniel’s mouth inside me.
It is so overbearing that people leave open mics,
but it’s still screaming, because when we are quiet,
we itch.  We are clawing our skin to create holes
to sing through.  That’s why we scratch
our heads when we are thinking.
We just need to get the ideas out
before they burn us alive.