No School For Us

Squabbling and shouting is our normal, not in other’s prissy persnickety vocabularies. Hoarders, we climb over rats to get to our clothes Others envy us this luxury No one bathes; the bathtub houses stacks of magazines. You can throw a half-eaten sandwich behind the couch the flowered one or the one with the stripes? Who cares? No one. There is a smell; possibly a body, lurking about. We get used to it, my brothers and sisters and I. Slurping our tomato soup with our elbows on the table. Mom and Dad are nowhere, having left years ago. We live like animals, spraying on perfume when we go out. There is no reason for company, who needs it anyway? There are eight of us if we need to play Monopoly. I gather up the pieces from under the table. The welfare people are here. I stand in front of the door. Cautioning my seven siblings to be quiet, and they are. No school for us; we like our hoarder world. Shhhh!