The Mouse In The Bucket
*
I caught white moths with my brother in the desert shrubbery near my first house in Dubai. White dust on our fingers. White dust in the jar.
They bled yellow if I pressed their bodies too hard.
It was easier to touch creatures back then.
My father caught a wild green parrot. It had a broken wing and was sitting under our parked car. We put it in the large outdoor cage with the lovebirds and the next day we found it had killed six of them.
But the lovebirds had a habit of killing each other, anyway.
Mother gutted fish in the kitchen. She showed me an egg sac. She showed me, on the tip of her finger, a tiny crab she found inside a stomach.
I flicked the tails off the sandy lizards that skittered over our bedroom walls. I watched the tails jump around on the floor. I believed in a soul.
Our dog, BJ, whined under the table when we blew the harmonica or the old copper horn.
At school we crowded around a young bird that fell from a nest. Zia scooped it up and ran with it. We ran after him, yelling. What was he planning to do? What were we?
Jungle Book. The Secret of Nimh. The Wind in the Willows.
I wanted to fix the broken wings of sparrows. And then the sparrow would love me and takes my good name to the rest of the Bird Kingdom.
I would approach a sparrow in the grass, hoping for it to be injured.
A Pakistani man came to smoke out the beehive when it got too large. Left us with a chunk of honeycomb in a jar. I was upset; I wanted the whole thing.
I rolled up a National Geographic. The cockroach reared its head, spread its oily wings.
When I hear thunder I still think of the old lion at the Dubai Public Zoo, and how we knew, no matter where we were in the zoo, that it was his feeding time.
My father chased a camel around the house. I ran behind him, laughing.
My sister forgot to fill the hamster's water. We carried it out into the desert, dug a hole in the sand.
The angelfish got stuck in the aquarium pump.
BJ's heart stopped with me kneeling beside him. He started coughing, and I knew, in that moment, he was going to die.
I caught a mouse and filled a bucket with water, and watched it swim in circles until it gave up and sank
and for this I ask forgiveness, even now, from the lords of the Rodent Kingdom.
*
I caught white moths with my brother in the desert shrubbery near my first house in Dubai. White dust on our fingers. White dust in the jar.
They bled yellow if I pressed their bodies too hard.
It was easier to touch creatures back then.
My father caught a wild green parrot. It had a broken wing and was sitting under our parked car. We put it in the large outdoor cage with the lovebirds and the next day we found it had killed six of them.
But the lovebirds had a habit of killing each other, anyway.
Mother gutted fish in the kitchen. She showed me an egg sac. She showed me, on the tip of her finger, a tiny crab she found inside a stomach.
I flicked the tails off the sandy lizards that skittered over our bedroom walls. I watched the tails jump around on the floor. I believed in a soul.
Our dog, BJ, whined under the table when we blew the harmonica or the old copper horn.
At school we crowded around a young bird that fell from a nest. Zia scooped it up and ran with it. We ran after him, yelling. What was he planning to do? What were we?
Jungle Book. The Secret of Nimh. The Wind in the Willows.
I wanted to fix the broken wings of sparrows. And then the sparrow would love me and takes my good name to the rest of the Bird Kingdom.
I would approach a sparrow in the grass, hoping for it to be injured.
A Pakistani man came to smoke out the beehive when it got too large. Left us with a chunk of honeycomb in a jar. I was upset; I wanted the whole thing.
I rolled up a National Geographic. The cockroach reared its head, spread its oily wings.
When I hear thunder I still think of the old lion at the Dubai Public Zoo, and how we knew, no matter where we were in the zoo, that it was his feeding time.
My father chased a camel around the house. I ran behind him, laughing.
My sister forgot to fill the hamster's water. We carried it out into the desert, dug a hole in the sand.
The angelfish got stuck in the aquarium pump.
BJ's heart stopped with me kneeling beside him. He started coughing, and I knew, in that moment, he was going to die.
I caught a mouse and filled a bucket with water, and watched it swim in circles until it gave up and sank
and for this I ask forgiveness, even now, from the lords of the Rodent Kingdom.
*