Dead rat in my brother’s broken house
Clutching baby tight in your last breath
Cold and starving in the ceiling
— I wonder was the baby first
and then you died knowing you’d done
your mother’s duty best you could
Or did you go first,
while baby snuggled closer
for your dying warmth
in my brother’s broken house
And in those moments did you know
that you were a rat, in a world
and that you were soon to die
forever, never coming back
to this moment in the ceiling
with your rat baby
in my brother’s broken house
