Photo by Scott Umstattd on Unsplash
The mice left droppings in our cabinets
The mice also shit in our rice
We ate it anyway
The dishes made us sick
We barely rinsed them
When they piled too high
To reach, we ignored them
And improvised with cereal
In a pot, eggs on a frisbee,
The handle of a hairbrush
To stir mass chili.
I used to live in a house with 25 people
The house next door had 25 people
Sometimes I lived next door too
I slept with most of them
And watched the rest sleep with each other
The mornings lasted into evenings and I’d throw
A parka over pajamas to step out
In slippers in the snow
To go next door to watch TV
And burn breakfast mac n’ cheese
I used to live in garbage
But with good company
Now I live alone
It’s not even that clean
Claire Denson is a Poetry Reader for The Adroit Journal and holds an MFA from UNC Greensboro, where she served as Editorial Intern for The Greensboro Review. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Massachusetts Review, Sporklet, and Hobart, among others. You can find her at clairedenson.com.