second life

once translucent, candy-stripped
funnel of nourishment made more declarative than I’d thought possible

now—only ten days since—
blackened and fossilized
turned a million years old
a remnant of a previous age
Pleistocene era, man-apes
The first human foliage blooms on her vine, then shrivels and falls

Now she is one of us—Second Life, tin cans, plastic bottles,
her hunger soon will turn to horoscope-gazing