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The Woman Who Used to Squeak

The doctor peered into her throat
and said with eyebrows rocketing,
There’s a mouse in your throat!
and reaching for the tongs,
pulled the mouse out.
Scruffy with saliva, dazed and confused,
the mouse stopped squeaking,
looked at the woman, ran down
the leg of the examining table,
vanished into a hole in the wall
that no one, not even the mouse,
knew about. The women —
for her part — shouted squeaklessly
THANK YOU to the doctor.
On her way home, she yelled HELLO
without a single squeak,
waving to friends & neighbors.
When she spoke in a normal voice,
no one heard squeaking,
nor when she was silent.
Not everyone liked her
without her squeak
and with her new ability
to shout, hoot,
holler, roar
and guffaw.
Too bad for them.

—
Ellen Hirning Schmidt designed/teaches Writing Through the Rough Spots for students in the U.S. and 15 other countries. Since her first submission at age 70, she has received a Helen Kay Chapbook Prize, Connecticut Poetry Society Award, Pushcart Nomination, and was an American Writers Review finalist. Her second full-length collection will be published early in 2026.

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