‘Mouse in the House’ and ‘If I Could Cut Off My Ear Like Vincent’

Samiksha Ransom

---

Mouse in the House

I wanted to kill the mouse
but just as I was getting ready to thrash it
with my decades-old and rusty badminton racket
I felt something like a tremor in my chest
and a strange thought waltzed into my head:
What if he’s Ratatouille?

I couldn’t help it,
had to lower my racket
though I didn’t put it down entirely.
If he was Ratatouille what was he doing here
in the house of a cranky miserly woman
who was the opposite of an artist?

Had he lost his way? Do mice lose their way?
Like my daddy had said I had, some forty years back?
The mouse stood still, discerning my conflict,
then made the decision to mirror my dog’s puppy face.
For a minute I was stunned; and he made no move either,
knew any movement might land the racket on his butt.

He was the real deal, a gentle-mouse I’d swear,
knew politeness and courtesy was the formula.
And never had a mouse read a woman so accurately!
Round eyes turned rounder, round ears widened, pucked up.
Only the whisker on the right cheek twitched
with a nervous hesitation. My racket also shivered in my hand.

Did he know I had watched the movie
as a child, with my Daddy?
Was he Ratatouille, in fact? In that case he’d be older than me.
And how could I thrash a senior’s butt?
I changed strategy — dead Daddy wouldn’t be pleased.
And at least I could please him in death. Let his soul RIP?

So I decided to freeze, breathe, observe.
If it turned out to be a dupe,
I’d smash it with my racket and feed it to the neighbour’s cat.
It was as if he had almost heard my thoughts
or else I must have said them aloud,
for his tail snuck under his legs, ears drooped

and he squeaked more than once. Forty-five times, I think.
Then shutting his eyes in anticipation of my blow
he gave himself over to me. Frenemy? Bold. I thought
Damn! I cannot do it! You have a nice life, mouse.
What if you’re Ratatouille? So what, if you’re not?

---

If I Could Cut Off My Ear Like Vincent

would my brain become a vegetable?
radio without reception?

would my throat become a clogged gutter?
my words entangled like hair?

and names be reduced to an assortment
of vowels lightly strung with consonants?

could I sabotage sound?
terrorize language?

stripped of her power
would speech hang her head in shame?
or clench her fists in anger?

could I slice away my pain
like potato chips

or chip at its edges
with a saw?

chew it in morsels
spit them out?

In the quietness of my head
would a song break out?

---

Samiksha Ransom is a writer from Allahabad, India. Her work has appeared in Tint Journal, EKL Review, The Chakkar, JAKE, The Lake, Live Wire and more. Samiksha was longlisted for the Poets in Vogue Challenge by the Young Poets Network in 2023. She publishes her newsletter called Letters from Sam and is on Instagram as @samiksha_ransom.

---

Featured photo by with cloudd (Pexels)