Coquina Heart

• Southern Manitoba is sedimentary;
• clay loam coatings and
• muddled moraines shape
• tributaries of melted
• Agassiz
• whose remnants linger,
• exposed
• in Stonewall Quarry Park
• where my first-grade class fills brown
• paper bags with fossiliferous rocks,
• hands chalky and dry. 
•  
• Three lime draw-kilns watch us wander, stark
• against bleak spring clouds.
•  
• Nicholas takes a picture
• of me and my baggie
• using his disposable,
• promising
• with averted eyes
• to relinquish the developed product. 
•  
• We go back to skimming deposit
• for imprints of shells and snails
• as the kilns blur in the pitter
• patter of rain—cutting
• our field trip short as we clamber
• into muggy buses bound toward
• fluorescent classrooms. 
•  
• Nicholas returns the photo five years later, shrugging.
•  
• Squinting at the flimsy image,
• I see a girl subtracted.
• Someone who hasn’t witnessed
• the erosion of the elderly
• or embedded bony fingers into
• slate and granite
• engravings
• of her family name.
•  
• My sturdy, first-grade face
• grins,
• ignorant
• of love’s unconformity;
• the stratification of secrets;
• and the pressures of persona. 

Photo graciously provided by Debby Hudson from Unsplash.