How to Be Fossilized

how to be fossilized

first, you need to be small

and buried completely.

for a million years,

you cannot be touched.

not by the sun, not by water,

not by scared animals or hunger or wind.

the ground needs to be airless

and glittering with iron,

and you? 

you have to be carbon in its mouth.

and listen, no matter what, 

you have to be complete.

you cannot be afraid 

of being split.

not by earthquakes, not by tree roots,

not by landslides or undoing ice. 

not by fire, not by furrows

by pressed new mountains or human hands.

no, you are the right place & the right time

and you are there, beneath it all,

when the wind decides to just 

slightly

undress the earth, only a strap off a shoulder,

and there you are –

like a body sculpted into marble stone —

your once-living hair and fur and petrified teeth

suddenly, a physical miracle, 

& seen.