Whale bones. Butterfly displays.
Jellyfish in greenish jars. Crickets.
Deer legs. Fish on racks. Fins on racks,
drawers and drawers, row after row.
Mice and rats in thin cardboard boxes.
Fish, unmoving in still, green water.
Do they think they’re in the ocean?
Does this place smell like home?
Rabbit fur. Rabbit paws. Rabbit ears.
Rabbit bones. Bird bones. Whole birds.
Frozen in time. On branches.
Spreading their wings in glass boxes.
Are their windows as clear as the sky?
Do they remember life out there?
The natural history of this age old land is
stowed in a wooden and white
plastered room. Fossils imprinted where
a shell used to be. Bones with carbon dating.
Bones I touch while putting away boxes.
My handprint on their arms. The natural
history of everything that has walked here.
There is something beautiful in the basement.
There is something beautiful being stored at 65 degrees.
Everyone is here. Their arms. My handprint on their arms.
It’s beautiful. Everyone is here, just below the ground.
Marley Hollen is a writer from Massachusetts and an undergraduate student at Mount Holyoke College. Her work has appeared in the Eunoia Review and TeenINK Magazine.