K.M. Hanslik

fossils

A wound the size of my first love opened
my chest one day and sprung flowers—

foxglove, star-aster, outlines sacred to deer
and other prey. It was carnivores, once,

in the eons before this, who first took for
granted the shape of a nesting ground,

the tenderness of an unbroken clavicle.
For love to be born, a great many things

had to perish. It is not surprising that
the first womb founded a thousand ways

to say I love you. Upon discovering such
a seed within myself, I might recount every

extinction: Permian, Cretaceous, Anthropocene—
if not for generations of prey animals behind me,

I might be so reckless as to believe every stone
holds an imprint, a whole life, and I’d press

myself down into that shape, gladly.