To what do I owe this displeasure? To the mouse,

who has returned from wherever it lives
when it doesn’t live in my kitchen, hidden.

The squeaking started today.

I don’t know what it means—
if it’s trapped, if it’s overjoyed, if it’s a siren song,

or (please, no) if there are infant mice
headed teeth first into any cracks in the caulking.

Curious that I should be trapped here indefinitely
in the new normal

with a rodent who just showed up one day,
who chose this place,

and that all it wants to do is get warm, stay warm,
get fed, stay fed, and die. And ideally,

in that order. All of us
staying inside for hours on end, waiting for news

of more infections and more recoveries, for more
restaurants to shutter and hospitals to overflow,

city parks to be converted into cemeteries
for our mounting dead,

and this is where the mouse has elected to stay.