Renee Beauregard Lute
Hamster Dream
I’m in my bed reading Garfield comics. Suddenly, I remember. I had a hamster a year ago, maybe more. I put him in a mailbox under my bed for safekeeping. He has been in that mailbox, forgotten, for a year or more. I’m nauseated. I crawl under my bed and pull out the mailbox. Something is bumping around inside. I’m cold and sweating. I’m afraid to open the mailbox. I’m afraid of the abandoned hamster. My mother calls me from downstairs. There’s a downstairs because we are in the old-old house in Ware and I am a child again. Oh, I think. I am just a child. Maybe the hamster will understand. The nausea does not go away, because I know that he will not understand.
Renee Beauregard Lute writes and publishes in a number of places. She raises her children in Issaquah, Washington, which is wonderfully close to the home of Harry and the Hendersons.