First actual cold day. Still sleepy I made my way to the window and the early fall air entered the room. Mice come every time it starts being cold looking for warmth, food and some attention. Our apartment is a constant shelter for all the lost mice around Westhafen station. I can’t stand them.
No no, You dont understand< I literally can not stand mice! Every time I meet mice in our apartment I freeze up and fear mixed with disgust mixed with a deadly wish to look and keep looking and from the very bottom of my feet rolling, swimming up my hips through my stomach my throat comes the annoyingly girly horror movie vacuumed needle of scream.
And I just run.
I leave my apartment for the occupation of the mouse. I can not bear the constant risk of seeing it at any moment at any corner.
The last time it came was a year ago in the room of my flatmate behind the wall. One calm September evening a shout behind the wall and a couple of days later the mice broke through to mine. I couldn’t eat or sleep or walk around the house. Look inside kitchen cabinets. Move the curtains. Open closed doors.
The guy I dated at the time allowed me to stay at his place.
At this point our 2 months relationship felt like a pleasant, warm, stinky, weirdly attractive swamp. He said he didn’t really want to be with me. I didn’t actually like him. We kept being together. He had a lot of hair and I always found that blindingly hot.
So here I was, in between his sofa pillows watching Christina Aguilera music videos on TV. He left for a party after one more argument. Thick blackout fabrics kept the heavy sweet smell of his yesterday’s weed holding the situation. The furniture. My body on that couch. Sweaty sex memories from 2 weeks ago. I kept asking myself what the fuck am I doing here. We were ugly and sad…but mice!
With its tail, short grey little fur. Rushing. Eating my food!! My walls. Touching my furniture. My things. Maybe MAYBE even going into my bed at that very moment.
He would hold my hand while asleep.
“I’m so afraid to lose you”
Tears stuck in my throat. I’m pretending to be asleep.
Every morning we would run together. Felt refreshing. I’d always run behind. He made me breakfast. Always the same, always tasty. Fix the blanket on me. Carry my bags. Hit me during sex. Call for whatever reason.
Every morning I’d secretly steal a little piece of cheese from the fridge. Carefully sliding my hand into the plastic and grabbing one slice after another with my fingernails. I sleep next to the wall. Dance around with my pants off. Mess the cigarette ashes on the coffee table. Cry in the kitchen. Roll my eyes on his childhood stories.
Kofte sandwich from the toaster and sweet black tea. 13 roses on my birthday. Spaced out glance from the corner of the party. Squeezed out one last time drunken birthday sex. We couldn’t touch each other anymore.
Hard grey sofa pillows sucked me in and I fell asleep in the migraine. There was never enough of him for me, it was suffocating.
“I need to grab something at home.”
The next morning he walked me down to the metro station. The cold air of the noisy street.
“When are you back?”
I said I will text him and ran down the stairs. The cigarette piss ubahn wind blowed the warmth of his embrace off me.
The next morning the mouse died.
I never saw this man again.
Something went wrong in those families
My mother keeps silence
