Last night I dreamed about Thalattosuchia,
that outrageous sea crocodile, Greek-named
but raised from the clay in Southeast Asia,
on ground I could have traipsed as a kid.
The scientists said she might have lived
in freshwater. Renderings depict a dolphin
barracuda, but I don’t know how the artists
get there from the bones, those gaping spaces
between the ribs—fins that hid longer limbs
than expected. Her skeleton dated Jurassic,
making me think, of course, of the classic horror
theme park of clones I would absolutely
visit were it real. I’d go, even knowing
what I know about the end, stout legs kicking
down a gullet, what one gets for calling
a thunder-lizard a “clever girl.” The closest
we came as kids was when we dug up a pile
of skulls in the woods, unleashed our amateur
forensics. We took toothbrushes to the clay
in the sockets, wiped the long white palates
and canine grins. Our parents screamed
to bury the dog bones back in the ground again,
to stop making disturbances, dirtying our dresses.
In dreams I lie back, spine to the iron-drenched
soil, summoning that rush of wonder,
willing her to swallow me whole.
Nobody’s Girl
Kimberly Gibson-Tran studied linguistics at Baylor and the University of North Texas. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Rust & Moth, Baltimore Review, Passages North, Reed Magazine, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Porter House Review, Third Coast, and elsewhere. She lives with her husband and cats in Princeton, Texas.