10/7/08: Eek!
One of the Three Blind Mice Finds Work
By ALARIE TENNILLE
Joie de vivre. I know the secret.
People don’t expect it from me.
Think I should be bitter scurrying
around, nowhere to nowhere, in my
prison of darkness. Oh, the flashbacks!
The screams, the dreadful screams—
not knowing where they came from!
“Les souris, les souris!” shrieked
the farmer’s wife. I could feel the knife
cutting the air. Heard the pain
of mes amis, but didn’t recognize
my own voice: a high E that smelled
of iron and salt and made me see
light for only a second. Somehow
I got out of that sharp blackness
into this one, a velvet, welcome black
smelling of lavender, musk, ginger,
and flowers most people can’t name.
It’s my job to mix the scents in right
proportion so no one knows except
another Nose. Joie de Vivre—the
perfume that’s the talk of Paris.
