Indigo

Today

you tell me

you are a baryonyx-

slender-nosed, crocodilian,

a dense-boned, fin-spined predator

who hunts the

deep, lightless watery

depths.

Do you choose this

because

it can see

the near-invisible that resides

deep

within the bioluminescent realm?

Perhaps you wish to wave your webbed claws

beneath the surface

of the unspoken-

light up the answers

like plankton

when you cannot see

the changes in emotion

that subtly alter a room

without a word.

-

Last month

you were euoplocephalus

infinity-shaped-club

on back tail

ready to bludgeon

or protect.

On days that you returned

from school

freshly teased and still friendless

I watched you retreat

into stone-hard plate armor,

a prehistoric armadillo

swinging a tail

of verbal hurt

as if the centrifugal force

would pull the sadness

away from your heart

and into your extremities.

-

Most of us,

you tell me

are birds now,

several generations of species

evolved away from dinosaurs.

We are capable of finding secret messages in

a flash of scarlet plumage

or the warble of a springtime call

at dawn.

But you are not feathered

and you are missing the vocal cords

to communicate

in ethereal treetop song.

You-

and others diagnosed

like you-

are still sauropod

locked in a timeline

where asteroids never came.

As you graze among the towering tree ferns

in the humid, dragonfly-filled evening,

I watch you hope with held breath

that one of the times

you fill the space around you

with words of detailed, precise, passionate fact

instead of vague, amoebic feeling

you will find a friend

of scale and claw

who can respond.

Until then, I gather information

from bygone millennia

I fill my head and notebook with answers

to your million questions

and seek the information

that unlocks your smile.