this, here, now

choosing life is not the hope-drenched, sunny eyed, firm-footed move it's sometimes made out to be. rats deserting a sinking ship get bad press. the captain who went down with his ship is a honourable man. we will make movies about him, and that moment when he decides to hold on to the sea princess, his breath growing dearer by the second, is shot through with incandescence. they disappear into the far blue, graceful, entwined, dead. he held his baby, and she took him down. the poem, it just writes itself.

the rats, on the other hand, are vermin. they eat precious supplies, bore through linen, shit on larder shelves, and scurry about guiltily. they make veiny, transculent babies and occasionally eat them. their tails are an unacceptable length of gross, and their eyes are beady and shifty, and all those other words that novelists find so useful.

the thought that these dirty little bags of disease actually want to go on living is despicable to us. that they would swarm about covering corridors and stairs like a grey, writhing carpet is just so infuriating. after all that the poor ship did for them, gave them a place to scavenge, keep warm, breedbreedbreed, this is how they repay her. they run away when she needs help the most. the ocean's pouring in gleefully, splintering floors, storming through hinges. oh, why won't the rats do something? organise rafts, radio for help, play violins, something.

there are times when you need to go away to stay alive. and it isn't pretty. it isn't easy. sometimes it isn't even legal. you get called names. bastard. slut. coward.

nobody gives him a hand when a husband of sixteen years looks into the tired eyes of his wife, sleep-deprived from mourning her seventh miscarriage, vulnerable in her torn housecoat, ridden with self-doubt and the smell of greasy dinner, and says, it's over i'm leaving. a mother who up and leaves her daughter after the girl's second attempt at suicide, is not going to have a prayer said for her come sunday morning. except maybe to condemn her wretched soul. war epics aren't inspired by the scaredshitless men who ran away from the battlefield, jumping over carcasses and thinking, glad i'm not him.

they should have stayed. organised rafts, radioed for help, played violins, something.

those rats, they die too. the poor dumb fucks, where did they think they were running to?

if you asked them, they'd say, squeak keek, keek. not to, from.