Selfie

Let’s do this like a trilobite with an underwater smart-

phone (it rests against the debris of an old eruption. I

only have to nudge it) and show how I shed last year’s

crackle and armor. How friendly I seem, nude, my calcite

the silt, my three (or four—the light is poor this far under)

antennae rising out of the darkness, into which you too have

descended. And we embrace as the unshelled are able, our

soft abdomens pressing against each other, while above us

the fanged creatures of the lighter regions, born to penetrate,

howl in envy (if they can, without lungs), even though we’re

mostly extinct, and this photo won’t be seen for a million or

more years, when something with two legs and arms in a rubber

carapace, its single eye a sunken moon, clicks a button on our

(very) smartphone that’s under a shipwreck. And here we are.

Grinning in ways no one has ever seen.