extinction

sometimes the gone animals
talk through the new ones.
i open my mouth & speak dodo
into a microphone at a rally
about trying not to die.
when people ask me,
"are you alive?" i respond in
the old calls of iguanodons
who carried their eggs like
footballs into the fire. when i was
small i became obsessed with
the death of the universe after hearing
a priest say, "it could come any day."
i learned the sun has a pretty long time
to go which i found unnerving.
how many more mistakes & hungers
will this little wedding ring hold?
i sometimes consider if there was
a universe before this one. if those creatures
had dreams of permanence.
if they wrote their histories in
some kind of stone. if when i open my mouth
there are fragments of their longing.
their poems & their catastrophes.
the last tasmanian tiger turned into
a rainstorm in a zoo with only
black & white photographs. i look at her
& i see my own teeth. i reach
into her mouth & pull out a star. 
she says, "do not leave me." i promise not to.