fossil
fast forward a million years or seven ice
cream sticky fingers picking up the shell
of me nestled in the sputum on the beach
tilting me this way and that looking
for angles tracing ice cream fingers
through the ess that housed my spine
look mum tacky thumbs into sockets
ears to my hip bone listening for the music
that moved them holding my femur
to the light to check for opalescence
maybe my kind no longer exists raising
my value as relic maybe they’ll dislodge
the lump in my throat dismiss it as a pebble
freeing up my voice box maybe ice cream
explorer no concern for germs puts their tongue
to my funny bone to taste my humor and
maybe I’ll snap like pop rocks
in their mouth or sting like electricity
or worse maybe there would be no taste
at all beyond the seasoning of the sea
I can imagine being fused to a rock seeking
succour not wanting to spend eternity
alone then they’d have to brush until the ladder
of my ribs was clear in the gentlest of severings
and then I wonder if I’d miss my flesh despised
for large parts while still attached would I yearn
for the abundant softness better still
would the ice cream anthropologist draw
me the body I’ve been missing
maybe they’d find carvings
like on the inside of a cave etched
into my hip plate by an eager wife
depicting domestic bliss or help me
in uneven letters maybe they would put
me to their mouth play me like a conch
and call the spirits of all the waves
that ever crashed It’s possible I’d be in-
complete missing a legbone or a knuckle
which already washed-up thousands
of miles away from here shaped like home