Mahler adds a false drama to my winter afternoon.

I’m the bear who’s been torn to bits by the shotgun,

but I’m not. I’m the silent mouse, daintily crawling,

searching for approval, strangled by all of the thorns

of ice falling with aggression from the moldy brick

buildings. The scampering of the Mahler violins

makes me jump on top of the stale structures, and

the horns, the most powerful horns with the trombones,

they urge me to tear into the buildings with giant claws

made from plastic straws which never transport

the vanilla shake that helps fix my terrible moods,

but the buildings smash back at me at impossible

diagonal angles, shrinking me, forcing me to realize

who or what it is that I am. The man in the cafeteria

Speaks on the phone as if with his lover, and he’s

terribly ugly, but he creates life worth living, while I

pull the shards of ice out of my body, while Mahler’s lush,

glazed violins sing of unspeakably beautiful children, and

just before the children die, hope bubbles in my silent zones,

Trashed again by a man who is really a mouse, a parasite.

.