Today I’ll begin to become the popular writer I was made to be. I’ll procrastinate no more show boredom to the door. Today is the start of my writing life. I’ll write a best seller. I’ll finish off two works in progress, I’ll complete a second draft of my first completed book and I’ll send work off.

I’ll reap the rewards I know are due. I’ll do all of this and be a good wife and mother too. I’ll care for the puppies up the other end of the house and I’ll throw away that little mouse who was too curious and paid his price.

Death is the end for all of us, no death quicker than the death of that little creature who greeted me this morning. Well, he didn’t greet me as such, but he was right there, with his eyes eternally open, when I went to the kitchen to get my first coffee to help me meet the new day. I thought about his little life, and said I was sorry.

I also chastised him, even though he’d paid his price. When I dispose of him, later today, I’ll do it in the usual way, removing his still body from the trap and flinging him skyward. I’ll watch as his tiny corpse obeys gravity’s laws and arcs back down the the ground.

I’ll say a silent goodbye, and then go back inside, to check on the puppies, to look at the computer, with its works in progress not progressing because of the mouse. Because of my procrastination really, I know that.

I try to stay on track, but now I’m thinking about mice, and wishing our dogs would do their job properly, and now I’m thinking about how it might be better if we had a cat instead of all these dogs. Then I have to tell myself off for the heresy of the thought, Cats Indeed! We’re a dog family, no more cats for us – the dogs wouldn’t allow it. Though cats creep into my consciousness and end up on the computer screen, on the page, in poems I read in public. What is it about the cat? Their devotion to their own best life perhaps – I’m jealous of them. As a wife and mother, I can only dream of living a cat’s life, sleeping in the warmest, softest spot, devotion only to self. Perhaps my dark side, the side I keep hidden away, is a cat.

An interesting thought and one to explore further perhaps, but not now, I’ve got things to do. Lots of things to do, still no work done on my works in progress. I wish the mice would stay outside!