I met Mickey Mouse for dinner this week
at a bar we both used to know
so well.
He spoke in tongues, but in reality,
he didn’t speak at all,
just gestured wildly over his beer,
sloshing it this way and that.
Leaning over the back of his arched
chair,
he patted his costumed belly,
moving sluggishly back toward
me before reaching out his hand
to take me onto the dance floor
for a spin.
We twirled gracefully across the
wooden floor,
his oversized ears stealing the attention away
from our marvelous step.
His nose only bothered me slightly.
I kept wondering where Minnie might be.
Did she know that her faithful husband of many years
was out dancing drunkenly with a human, no less?
But I didn’t care.
I lost myself in the depths of his costume
that night.
We fumbled awkwardly in his too small mouse hole.
He took off his ears and unzipped his suit,
and I started screaming madly
until I lost my voice,
because the mouse wasn’t a mouse at all,
but a man who
never really recognized himself
in his own mirror.