whose mouse are you?

there's a man in the house. there's a man in the house and i forgot my 
toothbrush and my feet are cold in this house, this house, which house? 
the broken one? well, broken no more, if ever it was even 
cracked...smoothed out to the finish, not a blemish on the cornerstone 
here, not a smudge...all ironed out and smoothed, with man's shoes beside 
the doorstep, with man in the bed in the other room, and my scruffy little 
nose flickering curiousity whiskers and wondering on the time...whose 
mouse was i? the sister far from home? and once upon a time it was just 
the ring master and the wonderbird and me, and the ring master had little 
to do but manage the flea-bitten stage tricks the rest of the carnival had 
to offer...but now, the season change, it's all so swift. out of the nest, 
alice from another land, looking back on some past that might have never 
existed...she takes up a ballpoint pen, she smooths her skirts out...she 
doesn't understand. a moment ago, a minute, a second blink, this would not 
have occurred, existed, triumphed, and now it is even rumored that perhaps 
when the days grow longer and the sun hangs in the sky with a sweltering 
serenade little miss alice girl might go south and find those teacups 
after all--the disney kind--and spin in them. the disney cups. i never 
thought i'd be there, ever, no magic kingdom if you come dressed in 
rags--you've got to find a fairy godmother first, or prince charming, or a 
house full of dwarves. and nothing, i was bound to nothing, just traveling 
with a merry gypsy tune...and even my old nest in the mountains is nowhere 
near the same, all blue, all painted and papered and made gussied up 
pretty nice, erasing the koolaid stains in the floor, the cigarette burns 
from the curtains and the kitchen and the charcoal and pastels i dribbled 
along the edges in that long ago once time when i might have been an 
artist...hush hush. all clamoured up in curios and set on the shelf. my 
entire past existence...the existence of alice in her trees, in her 
raggedy ann slippers...it was all a dream, it never happened, it was only 
there to paint her eyes a cerain colour and then it was gone, just like 
everything else--take off the 3D glasses and see the world for what it 
really is, charlotte, your beloved ring master a computer consultant, your 
scarecrow a slave...only cairbre seems to hold true to the old code, being 
the moody artist dribbling paint on canvas and canvas on bone in the 
basement, but even he did not think your company important enough to take 
an extra trip or extra time to come find you and paint smiles on your 
brow, or at least show you his newest creations...waking up is always the 
hardest part, with this wrenching fear that none of it ever happened, that 
my heaven never existed that way, that someone had the controls and 
everything was on wires and it all depends on the way you let the light 
in...i was almost afraid even the mumbles boy, the mumbles one, the curly 
haired goof who was my parnter in this dance of insanity, would forsake 
me, he standing on the corner drug store sidewalk with his hair in those 
triumphant ebony curls from a distance so much like the boy who ran with 
me through funhouses and courted me on ferris wheels and won my heart with 
a carousel smile at the county fair half a million years ago it seems, so 
long, four years or so...there he stood, with another lady in his arms, 
the cuddly affection which makes me smile to think of how they made it, 
they finally made it, a year which is so much more than i can say for the 
same situation in another tune, another silly puckish boy on my arm who 
spent forevers frivously like words...how long does forever last, anyway? 
it doesn't matter, they have theirs, and i watched them, so happy, and 
walking towards...only..to..not..be..recognized. a dream am i? 
hallucinations in car windows, finally a few short words and then goodbye, 
and i stood there bewildered, alone, without even the one who would never 
let me be alone to comfort my chaos and remind me that it was simply the 
way the universe had always worked...of course, there was the next 
morning, knocking at his door with tam, only for him to come bustling out 
with that moth-eaten shirt and his hair all mussed with his thick southern 
accent pouring over his tongue "i would've let you all in sooner, but i 
was naked and i didn't think it would be really good for me to answer the 
door like that." the mumbles boy, near the train tracks, in the 
autumn...always the autumn, in all of his glory. a few short 
conversations, just watching him and looking at things and letting him 
remind me in so many small ways how ridiculous i always am and how easy 
things can be if you just stop worrying...stop worrying. i want to. i want 
to just flip off the switches and change the tracks and brighten the 
arrows to gold and keep going. this isn't so hard...i am a gypsy girl, 
after all, this should all be easy...simple. just like that. a snap. a 
click of the fingers. too rooted, to smothering the magic of my 
mountains...too attached to something called home, some place i could 
always click my heels to. now, to be divided in three, and the mountains 
grow hostile as they were when i first set foot in this land, and the 
house bites at my feet, and here, in this sub-city, i laugh away those old 
radioactive haunts that continue to plague my brain with those bitter 
memories of the time when i forgot. and the scarecrow and cairbre, where 
are they? our magic, our blowing bubbles to the stars, our screaming a 
million songs? gone, just like everything else. unable to hold, alice 
isn't good at keeping friends. taming is something she has never done very 
well. she darts around tam and sticks paws in to see if he'll catch her 
sometimes, but he won't, and she stumbles...she always leaves. it's part 
of the way, of the rhyme. the west wind picking up, it's time to sail a 
kite. not to be kept, not to keep. not to ever know a forever. or even a 
few. gypsy girls are used to this, they just pick up their bag of tricks 
and head on...there are a million roads to choose from. alice pushed out 
of wonderland through the back door and sent to recite her history 
lessons.

so forgive me if i make myself scarce these next few weeks/months/years 
(as alice has never been too wonderful with figures)...there are times for 
greening and there are times to count to see exactly how many seeds you 
have. and often i feel a few loads shy of a barrels, a few bushels 
short...my house, my carnival gone, just like i said, just because 
charlotte was sent away...i wish my writings weren't so damn prophetic 
sometimes.