Fragments
“Coprolites,” I slowly sound out the syllables then look at the definition: “Fossilized dinosaur feces.” I laugh in the empty hallway. Fossils sit silently behind glass, waiting for someone to look, to recognize their existence. How can this be all that’s left of entire species?
“I don’t have a home anymore,” I told my mentor yesterday, “I feel like I’m running around trying not to drop my heart with nowhere to put it.”
I was eight when I followed Mom down the sandy two-track lined by pine trees and Autumn Olives. “Look!” Mom bent over and picked up something from the dirt. An arrowhead. The stone chipped into a point. I held the cool stone in my hand, considering the memories it held, the last representation of the people who thrived in those woods.
Wet leaves cling to the bottom of my boot, and I stare at the Glossopteris, leaves preserved forever in pink stone. Brought from Australia to huddle in the corner of a basement hall, I wonder what kind of place those leaves fell on.
Under my bed is stuffed a small white box lined with tissue paper and filled with tiny fossils. My brother and I sifted through the dry dirt around the Maple trees in our yard. Hot summer days passed as we searched for fossilized shells lodged miles from any body of water. I was a thrill seeker on the hunt for the next shot of adrenaline.
Standing in front of the case, studying the tusks cracking with age, I know that sometimes all that’s left are broken fragments. But I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to believe that a moment can’t be resurrected once it’s dead.