I peel potatoes and carrots and try to gather up the skins and make a whole vegetable again, but they slip through my fingers and fall down the drain.

 

In the sewer, a rat eats them and up above, I’ve lost my appetite. The rat climbs up through the pipes and starts nibbling on everything it can sink its buck-teeth into: table legs, bed legs, fallen peels from vegetables I’ve skinned too far, and yes, my legs too. I would chase the rat with a splintery broom, but I’m too busy trying to fix things that keep falling between my fingers.

 

One day, the table gives out under the weight of my elbows, and that same night, my bed’s base gives out while I try to rest. The rat thinks this is funny. I should honestly squash the rat, but it’s too big now, not like a bug you don’t see when your shoe crushes it. So I just let it laugh at me, because I have no other choice but to.

 

I have guests over sometimes, though, and this is the best part: they never notice that I’m running out of potatoes and carrots, or that the table is off kilter and wobbly, or that I don’t sleep anymore because my bed is too uncomfortable now. Maybe it’s because I laugh when they laugh, or I’m quiet when they’re quiet, or I smile when they smile, I listen when they speak, and I stop speaking when they talk over me. They don’t even hear the stupid rat squeak or notice him living on my shoulders now.

 

He’s learned to speak, and he whispers in my ear while I blend in with the furniture.