Bog Myrtle & Peat

“Hello Rat;

Hello a rat”.

Gripped in a fever, I pull a blanket round my shoulders and watch a creature crackle in the pig sty straw. I repeat those words to myself over and over; hello Rat; hello a rat, And it occurs to me that there are two meanings here. And I say Go on then – let’s pass some time and draw a line between Rat and a rat. tarrat. atat.

And having asked, I think aloud and reply to myself that Rat is the substance from which a rat can be drawn. Rat is the mother; the fire from which a rat is cast like a spark to run and writhe and replicate like rice.

I shiver and watch as a rat comes to butter its whiskers on the lip of a trough. My toes curl with disgust, but having talked myself into an awareness of Rat, I’m glad to have some diversion; because the endlessness of Rat is enough to wake you screaming in the darkness. I recoil from an idea which runs like a stain to link the actions of a million slithering parts.

And I’m ever more thankful for a rat, which allows me to say “I know what that is”. There’s comfort in the hateful certainty of it; and reassurance because the replicant’s secrets are bare. A rat is one and the same wherever you find it; lapping itself in a relay of theft and coitus; countably foul. I know that a rat can be solved by a spade or a slavering dog.

And I’m sure there is no solving Rat.

I coil this idea round and through my clammy hands for twenty minutes. It leaves a mark like that day when the snow fell and the whiteness was hashed by the track and backtrack of small prints between the feed bins and the dump. I run a temperature of 100.5 °F, and the morning light is rancid in the doorway. I wonder – if Rat was here, could I see it? Because now I’m looking.