When we wake, we stretch to

fill out our expectations of where

what should be & then we look in

the mirror for confirmation is this

me is this me is this & we know it’s

silly but we do it every morning. At

least everything here is honest about

their mistranslation; I don’t expect

something with mouths it doesn’t use

for mouths to call me the right name

or to sing from their diaphragm. See,

there I go, with the analogies. I wonder

if something without photoreceptors knows it could

look at the sun, but these aren’t the animals

we call animals or their cousins-twice-

removed; these phyla have proboscises

and carapaces and jagged lines all over.

When we’re little the first thing we fall

in love with is the past steam engines

dinosaurs space programs and then

we figure it’s closed off: the museum of

natural history puts up velvet ropes saying

no children allowed around their time

machines and we grow up and grow

out and discover if you want to be

called MEGAFLORA or TRILOBYTE or

PANGAEA you can be but we don’t call

ourselves those because we don’t love

them anymore. Every morning we wake

up and remember what we could’ve been

classified as. We’re not so vain as to

think these are the fossils of our ancestors,

but these are the fossils of our ancestors.