Fossil

When I ask my toddler why she has torn the lime green piece of wallpaper from the wall, she explains she is picking flowers. I sprint after her when she lets herself out the sliding glass door wearing only a diaper, my running shoes and a hat. She asks me to pet the pup because she’s afraid to do it herself. I stroke his muzzle while she coos good fella from a safe distance. When he takes her stuffed hedgehog to his crate for a chew, she screams, mine, mine, mine in a voice any species could understand. I realize I am a fossil, just an impression of something that used to be alive. I cry reading The New Yorker in the bathtub. I can hear her in her room, singing, playing the metal faceplate of the heating register like a harp.