Determinant

Decomposition: Llano, Texas

15 D e C o m P o S i t i o n : L L a n o , t e X a S The rats are dismantling the old house exponentially. He half-recalls that once they were only three sleeping bodies, small and curled around each other. He made a pen for them on the slatted bedroom floor and found that he liked hearing them at night: their teeth, the rustle of them as they fucked and fought. The house had been so quiet—the bedroom worst of all—his bed half-empty until once he let them crawl in his sheets. They made high chittering sounds, licked the small hairs on his face. He liked the sour smell their saliva left on his skin, liked their hot breath. When the first babies came, he made a bigger pen, and then another, and the house grew a skin of chicken wire. one by one, they became mothers and fathers. in the bedroom they dug holes in the mattress, made room inside the coils and cotton to nest the small wriggling hairless infants he’d once shuddered at. twice a day, he feeds them, scattering buckets of corn. They flood the house, spilling out of the holes they’ve made, crawling over him, soft claws making shallow pink trails in his skin. The bedroom dresser drawers—once his wife’s—now house whole colonies, rose sachets ripped by small quick teeth, potpourri spilling over their piss and fur. He barely recalls that once 16 his wife had painted each room a pale blue; once he’d pressed a gouge to dark wood and made each dining room chair. now the baseboards they nailed in together are gnawed. The bedroom furniture is kindling on the floor, his wife’s small white nightgown threaded into nests. The house is coming unmoored around him. He or the bedroom they shared once is shaking. He closes his eyes and small noses press in. He wants it: the house, the unmaking. ...