A LETTER TO PALEONTOLOGISTS, FOUND ALONGSIDE MY REMAINS

Digging sorts and scanners of men,
by this filter of soil and livid, micro-life,
an osseous filament remains.

You’ll note my cavernous teeth—
I was a sheer cook and confectionist
just past initial maturity.

The form I once knew, now rendered
into final underframe,
has beaten a drum of Earth much,
and long ago married and fathered,
also perished.

Do not mind levels of hydrogen cyanide,
undecylenate, cadinene, or the benzyl family:
I smoked a pack by day, to the very Day.
Shortly into my vacancy, this cadaver
was defaced and ingested by tiny lives,
then decomposed and became dirt pure.

I stretched for love when alive, taut sinew,
but I never broke—psyche, no, heart, less,
and in bone... you plainly see no antemortem
fractures.

The right hand fascinated too sharply on a pen,
and often kept a thick callus.
When the body sang, it was in pitch deep,
and drew the falciform ligament hard.
There is no trace of hernia, nor poetry:
I offer no more than a corpse’s assurance
I had them both for some time.

Before my descent,
my oculus sinister wore intricate sights,
exhausted, while my right eye, far from sleep,
sat in red, though in pleasance.

Here are your skeletal remains of me.
My name was lost to document, but note
that all of my world was fulfilled.

RAY SUCCRE