fireplace & fossil 

breath left
us in the form of 
a storm cloud--

rain coming down in acid 
& corrosion--

the roof melting--
puddles in the kitchen

is this our blood
or merely summer's final
act of precipitation?

we learned
death is a kind of weather

you & i with our

bodies dropped like
allosaurus--

our teeth falling out 
like the points of 
a crown--

i want to be fossilized--

to be an impression or
maybe just a 

stone-recollection--

i want the next humans 
who live in our house
to use the fireplace--

to collect wood 
from the christmas trees
in the yard

burn their arms for smoke--

chimney choking on 
thunder--

will they come up with
names for us?

arrange our bones wrong
& see dragons

looming over us 
like wooden spoons--

arms crossed--

drinking steam from mugs--

their children scurry in
the basement--

they discover your old
boxes of green plastic army men

& only the eyes of my
beanie babies--

i know the fossils 
won't let us keep 
our eyes so in the night

when they sleep we can 
sneak away--

use the black stuffed-animal
pupils as our own--

& we will wonder 
how it was that we were
seeing with out them--

our sockets aching 
for color--

we turn to the fire
flickering still--

greys & whites & black shadows

making prehistory of
dining room furniture--

i ask you if you remember
when our father hung
a clock above the fireplace
& never bothered to change 
it's batteries--

it's face stagnant with
the lie of silent time--

we laugh as we imagine
the clock licked by 
flames--

when the family comes
back we will
lay back down--

lay down like good
fossils should 

but for now in the night
we can be  cretaceous--

break off pieces of
our vertabrae to watch the fire
bare her teeth--

hungry as us--

we take turns re-eating
our own refracted bones--

taste of sharp chalk or
pastels--

we should have used 
the fireplace long ago

before the earth pressed
us like rose petals
into the speckled kitchen
floor--

we hide our eyes beneath 
the fridge--