excerpt from Seven Saints & a Cigarette Butt
----You held a fossil in your hands: the pelvic structure of a small
Ceratopsian. You carefully balanced three dusted bones so they fit together into a shape you recognized
but that left me bewildered. You exhumed the fossil pieces from a site not ten kilometers south and just
finished brushing bits of fine dirt that clung to the cracks and crevices—cracks resulted from millions
and millions of years of pressure built up from layers upon layers of sediment. And still you held some
semblance of life in your hands.
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