Ammara Younas

a paleontologist discovers my father's fossil

no there was no fossil
there was a space in space where weathering worms gathered & weaved webs & wondered
where my father had disappeared
no there was no body but nakedness in the shape of a body
an ampersand without the words it joins
cornfield razed to the ground        no wilderness to find a home
the paleontologist told me once in a lampshade abbu grabbed a sorry forest fire enough to
light a storm  curious, he crushed its cheeks & their collapsed fields with  desire-run palms &
ran like an eyeball dragged on mirror  too quick to see his reflection
like Lot    he offered up his two daughters to the phantom ruin
& like Lot    he left his wife behind
   as she turned like an echo dusted up in a veil of salt & monarch wingdust & looked at the city
burning & burning & burning  to the ground
                                    & he went running & running off into a shore of smoke
he never liked looking
but the things he did
just to see a pond in the mist to feed & photograph & fatten it up
just to say nothing is more beautiful than this
& then capsize it in memory
stupid boy  he was always forgetting the scent of hunger                  once he had something else,
say a manmade thundercloud, fill his mouth

but no there was no fossil  just a space within space

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Ammara Younas is a poet and writer from Gujranwala, Pakistan. Her work has found a home, or is soon to, in spaces like Rattle, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Tahoma Literary Review, wildscape. literary journal, Gabby & Min's Literary Review, The Imagist, Small World City, Lakeer and Resonance.