Evolution
Hanna Hupp
On the X-ray of the sea lion you can see clearly
where its arm used to be.
A shriveled, shrunken thing. Long buried
in a nest of tendons and skin.
If you listen closely you can hear the hum.
Pangs of half-forgotten bone calling through flesh,
sloughed-off ache of vestigial bones
erasing themselves carefully,
century by century, from the blueprint of the body.
“Sometimes I think I can feel my tail,”
my mother said.
Hanna Hupp is a student at Western Washington University, studying English Literature and Humanities. She has wholeheartedly embraced her adoptive home of Bellingham, and when she isn't reading and writing poetry, she spends much of her time finding ways to explore it on foot.