The Skull and the Girl
Her thin white legs are sweet.
She crouches down,
takes a small brush,
sweeps dirt off my partly exposed skull.
I am extinct, the way some pachyderms are
while others are not.
Ice fields turn to desert.
Wind-straws evolve into sun hats.
An archaeologist discovers.
I like her hands,
they cup and measure,
they feel the weight of dispersed things.
The flesh over her knees
gentles the earth. She spreads herself –
an eclipse of her.
She tugs my skull from the earth,
uncouples my emptiness.
An era passes an age.
I am a footprint in an Alzheimer’s ward,
yet I recall her fingers
how once they brought sight to my eye-sockets,
how she placed me under the green-vine
of her life, cared for my hollowness,
planted the scent of her youth in it.
Questions like:
who-what-where,
and how
do not arise.
Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2019
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