by Kathryn NuernbergerMy nipples are brown now. One way to describe me is mouse- like. Like fur on the one decapitated in the silverware drawer this morning. Once we set a trap for a mouse so fat the hinge could do no more than pinch his neck contorted. for hours he clinked around the spoons. If you survive your own execution, the only justice is that you be permitted to walk away with your decapitated head in your hands, as Saint Denis did, up the hill into the chapel of the rest of his life, where we would come to eat sandwiches on a bench, holding hands as we would when we took the mouse to a grassy lot in the alley behind the First Presbyterian. Because a hawk noticed and became restless on his branch, we stood guard watching the mouse try to organize himself. It's disgusting to touch a rodent, so we used tongs to straighten the sideways spine trapped so unaccountably wrong. The fat creature limped himself into the yellow grass and further, the bird moved on, and we went home to dinner happy, knowing happy for the mouse was unlikely, but then so was Denis— how wide-eyed he must have been! When I told Brian about my nipples, he told me a little joke: A boy was in a terrible accident. He finally woke in the hospital and cried, "Doctor! I can't feel my legs!" The doctor was reassuring, "Of course you can't. We had to amputate your arms."
