My son brings home something from the beach,
dripping through a shoebox, it’s a mouse but it isn’t.

Twice we pull it out of the cat’s jaws, gentle
to both creatures, but cruel as deprivation always is.

“Go change your mouse’s water” I tell him,
after scouring books for what it needs and what it eats.

Silver or gold I read, so we leave it my old
tangled wedding ring, the one I smashed with a pliers.

In the morning there’s a coin, no ring, and the feeling
that something larger is coming towards us on the tide.

[Amelia Gorman spends her free time exploring forests and fostering dogs. Read her fiction in Nightscript 6 and Cellar Door. Read her poetry in Dreams & Nightmares and Vastarien. Her chapbook, the Elgin-winning Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota, is available from Interstellar Flight Press. Her microchapbook, The Worm Sonnets, is available from The Quarter Press.]