Archaeopteryx Visits Reiner Gamma
you were not meant to last this way.
pressed into stone, all feather-spine
and wishbone, the soft world
burned out of you.
between claw and flight,
between the mouth of rock
and the open, indifferent sky.
an impression of weather
where atmosphere cannot hold.
the geologic epitaph reads:
something was buried in this place.
a pale fossil
with the future caught in its teeth;
a bright scar
that sunlight refuses to age.
each of you saying
that survival is not the same
as being alive,
and that sometimes
the dead leave behind
not a body made whole,
but a proof of existence
awaiting exegesis.