On Past Suicidal Ideations
by Annie Przypyszny
At the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland,
there’s a model of a Carcharocles megalodon skeleton.
It’s thirty-seven feet long, suspended from the ceiling
by strong, thin wires, the wall behind it imitating
the blue gradience of the sea. The model is made
of foam; megalodon fossils have largely failed
to withstand the raze and ravage of 3.6 million years.
Its mouth is wide and ready, like a werewolf’s,
and its eye sockets bulge from its skull, the size of two
ominous cups emptied of their intentions.
As I stand before it, just us alone,
nothing forbids me from reaching out
and grazing its false bone with my fingertips.
Nothing forbids me from breaking off a spike
of its being, so big and dead, and plunging it into
my pocket. I wish someone was in the exhibit with me,
someone whose arm I could grasp in entreaty,
beg them to let me tell them about a certain longing
I had 3.6 million years ago.
Annie Przypyszny is a Creative Writing major at American University. Her poetry has recently appeared in 30 North, and will appear in the upcoming issues of The Northern Virginia Review and ANGLES.
This is beautiful–the enjambment, the specificity, the ending line all by itself. I have had the same feeling a million years ago. Love this.