We Are Rat Kin: Worthy Of Every Poem

I have such a strong visceral reaction to even the sight of this animal on a screen that in my childhood my sister decided I must have died of Bubonic Plague in a past life. I’m not afraid of much - heights, spiders, public speaking, none of these things bother me in the slightest, but a single glimpse of that skinny tail and I freeze in abject terror. And much like how we humans have been socialized to think, my fear manifests as hatred and disgust. I see it everywhere - on my timeline, in the streets - how fear turns to anger, how fear turns to revulsion. So today, I turn to the vast tales and skinny tails of Rats, to discover how we are the same, what makes us kin, what I can learn from them and why I should be grateful they exist. I am human, and the best I can do is to examine my fears, locate them in space, time and in my body, question their validity before scared turns to angry, before scared turns to disgusted, before fear turns to destruction. I’m gonna work through...