something about the water just the right temperature the earth dreams and proteins coalesce life, out of unlife i dip my big toe in a trilobite comes up to bite it from the sun touched silt poor thing, i think, stroking its back poor thing to be unmoored in time poor thing, suffocated because the earth changed her mind, tried again, words erased on a page, skittering legs going still, belly up, silt bed, sand grave, dark sleep without dreams