by Zac Furlough

Somewhere, concrete could talk 

about being stepped on 

stepped over 

all its life 

and the owl was the silent one 

holding still through the night, 

leaving the mouse to roam 

and breed and be – 

a paradise, 

a better time 

before Icarus fell 

(or was it that he jumped 

from beneath the sun 

because he missed his brothers 

and sisters?), 

sometime between the world 

being covered in fire and ash 

and coated in ice, 

when the owl and the walls 

listened and learned 

that the mouse walked without fear.