Velociraptor Poem by Aly Richardson

for every career day growing up I would
wear a lab coat and carry a paintbrush
to dust off the rocks and the tree roots
in the school playground teachers asked
me what I would be when I grew up as
though any second grader has a
fathomable concept of life as an adult
but I held up a rock with a trilobite
imprint and said with all the confidence
of a blossoming transgender seven year
old paleontologist that I wanted to
study dinosaur bones but I was lying
because even though dinosaurs and their
fossils fascinated me even though I was
terrified of horror films but still
watch Jurassic Park with the lights off
every night for a month and even though
I could see micropachycephalosaurus
without blinking I didn't want to be a
paleontologist I wanted to be a
velociraptor it was my second choice
after I was told I couldn't be a mother
I don't think I knew it then but one was
tied to the other like the warmth I
could already feel in my stomach giving
way to this cold-blooded killer with six
inch claws poking out of my toes
stalking through fields and forests
packs of clever girls because like women
Raptors are survivors hunting the
hunters the men who would contain us why
do men always expects a little of us
anyway I'm a velociraptor I can open
doors for myself thank you I don't need
to be walked to the car do you know why
people don't try to assault a
velociraptor why don't you come find out
of course I knew at 7 years old that I
would never become an impossible dream
because growing up requires sacrifice I
never grew a tail I never grew a womb I
never grew into a body that would sooner
choke itself than blossom and every
scrap of me that I call my own has been
one with my words not my claws so maybe
they're right maybe my body will always
be a dinosaur an oddity that doesn't
belong in this world consumed like a
sideshow and then forgotten or maybe
there will be a scene where a
paleontologist
finds a nest filled with eggshells and
realizes that life finds a way that I
found a way that mother and my body are
not mutually exclusive and that the
world is filled with velociraptors