Coprolite #2: Human paleofeces from the Quaternary Period of the Cenozoic Era
by W.A. Hawkins
Enshrined in a temperature-controlled museum case with a holographic placard featuring inaccurate descriptions such as: coprolite specimen from a middle-aged millennial male (I’m in my mid-thirties), and excavated from a site where automobiles, cell phones, and other rudimentary implements were also found, indicating it was a heavily populated region (I got locked outside my office, nobody was around, it was an emergency); as well as technically accurate but rude statements: likely an office worker, a generally low-status position that allowed for little time outside, which probably led to his severe vitamin D deficiency, and for unknown reasons, this individual consumed food and drink that directly contributed to his gastrointestinal distress, such as black coffee and leftover Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes reheated in a microwave, suggesting that he probably lived alone and was otherwise unlovable; located between the exhibit of two skeletons locked in eternal embrace, carved from the ashes of Pompeii, their fear frozen in time (originally thought to be a woman and child but later revealed to be two men), and Ötzi the Iceman with his sixty-one indecipherable tattoos and the birch fungus he used to combat the whipworms festering in his colon, is all that’s left of me; this moment, devoid of all context and yearning, where I brace, breathe, and pray for it all to end.
W.A. Hawkins is a writer from South Louisiana. He's the creator and host of Micro, a podcast that features short fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and the unclassifiable read by the writers who wrote them. You can find his work in Scalawag Magazine, Bayou Brief, Rejection Letters, and elsewhere.
