by Beth Understahl

Digging up the frozen mammoth brought about all kinds of speculation. Like how faces can become painfully distorted.  I can’t look away. And try to calm my mouth into a comforting gesture.

I hope you weren’t dreaming all those thousands of years. Unable to wake up from the most fearful vampires. Or animals stampeding off a cliff, turning into snowflakes as they fall.

I thought about being alive like a wish that burns in the atmosphere. Making its way here only as a far-off vision.

Even if we agree we can know each other, what then? I don’t know how to help you. The inevitable deterioration.

Snowflakes were falling all around us. The excavator kept brushing clear your face. Cruel how we can’t just let things be.  Find our own way out of the dream.