peter hated the house on mckinley street
in his eight-year-old brain it was a hot mess

since his parents moved there
all he heard were complaints and yelling

his mother was always moaning about the small rooms,
the lousy closet space, the faulty plumbing, the leaky roof

and the mice

they were everywhere - in closets, in pantries, in drawers,
behind the heater, under the radiators

they were in nooks and crannies, behind the refrigerator,
in the laundry room, even in the crawl space

they were almost always in hiding, rarely seen in daytime
except when they were found dead in a trap - also a rarity

traps were set methodically, enticing hors d'oeuvres were created
laced with cheese and peanut butter but still nothing worked

his mother would religiously check the traps every morning
and every time she'd mutter "those little ******* *******!"

the sly moves of mice to avoid the guillotine snap of a mousetrap
as they nibbled around a flap of cheese amazed everyone

besides traps his parents bought sticky cheese pads where the
tiny monsters would get their heads and bodies stuck permanently

one time peter observed a black mouse lying - and dying - on
a cheese pad...he pushed a second pad over its face

"i suffocated the little ****!" he exclaimed and when he told
his parents they bought him a gift card from the lego store

but every now and then one of the lilliputian invaders would
make a live unscheduled appearance

one october when the nights began to get colder his mother saw
a gray mouse climb up a cord leading to the microwave

she almost had a heart attack right there on the spot and there
was the time his father was looking in the refrigerator and

heard a strange scratchy noise behind him - he sensed
a sudden descent; a baby mouse had scurried off a shelf and

fell into a small trash can so his father immediately picked
up the can and hurled it out the back door

ultimately the parents decided to move to a swanky apartment
house and the night before peter had his last "mouse dream"

it featured a giant white mouse's head that was the size of
a billboard so big so menacing it scared him awake

finally he fell back into a gentle state of dreamless slumber...
and when he woke up his parents were taking down pictures

he looked out his window and saw a moving van pull up and
for the first time in a long time he was happy