Mourners gather in the mountains to pick up the bones of their long-lost cousins.
They find them in these rocks as in so many others.
From the banks of a dry river, they exhume a skeleton. It was something like a groundhog once, starved by a harsh winter and buried in the red clay that flooded its den.
They free a fossil from its accidental crypt, the tiny hands of a climbing mammal surrounded by the petrified wood it lived on.
Where the hills were cut through to lay down a road, they recover a skull, long and slender and punctured by sharp teeth.
Wildcats watch with guilt in their eyes. Somewhere they know— That their ancestors laid Allotheria low.
The survivors bring these remains home in a procession of relics that haven't seen sunlight since the mesozoic. In labs they find closure- They learn how they died, and understand how they lived.
Past the museum gift shop and somewhere near Tyrannosaurus, you can find them, interred behind glass, an honor reserved for saints and the extinct.
I wrote this for an event a while ago and never shared it. NOW YOU ALL GET TO BE SAD TOO, SORRY/YOU'RE WELCOME
