Fossils

Fossils

By McCaden McClure

It’s odd witnessing the remnants of a past life. The pages, once laden with emotions and connections, now void. One’s love for a person, ever lingering yet absent, like a superposition except one hates to look at it. Witnessing your past joy may sting, you see, and it makes it clear how much you’ve lost and for how little.

Yet one keeps moving, since moving forward is all you really can do. There are no ways out that don’t involve misery. To face it and see your loss for what it is, a small piece of greater joy, will bring you love in the time of grief.

New loves replace old, new places cover ruins, and the ever-churning wheels of life move on. But I hold a fossil of my loves, my many past lives and deaths.

I am soft limestone and sticky amber, taking up a shape not because I choose it but rather because it is there. If I could hurt less than I do, I would, but maybe then my life would be somehow less marvelous, less storied. The crust of the earth is richer for its fossils, contains wonders of stones and oils, but none would be there without pain and death. None would be there were it not for the imprint of past lives. Maybe one day I will become oil, containing the energy of a thousand lives, or diamonds packed into dazzling brilliance. or maybe i will remain a fossil, a memory of my past yet shaped in my present. Maybe I will learn from my fossils and prevent the pains of my future.