Mercy
CW: animal cruelty
Before retirement, my father taught
a Biology Lab at Mercy College.
He purchased four white mice for his students
to measure the animals’ rate of respiration.
He explained to the clerk they wouldn’t hurt them,
could return the mice after an experiment, without refund.
The man said that was fine –
They’re sold as feeder prey for snakes, anyway.
With his last group of rodents,
after recording the measure of their breath,
Dad saw their clean fur, whiskers,
how they slumbered in a heap.
Driving away from the campus,
he didn’t want them sold as food.
He parked by the community gardens, lush plots
of planted vegetation. A brook ran at one border.
When he opened the lid of their cage,
the mice looked up, bewildered by the sky.
Anne Mesquita (she/her) studies poetry at the Hudson Valley Writers Center. She is producing a collection about her father’s illness, grief, and coming-of-age. She works in Libraries Administration at Columbia University. She lives in Westchester, New York with her husband and daughter.
The Marbled Sigh 