After a while, you get used to the dinosaur roars and tantrums.

The parental body either numbs itself or turns into a tyrannosaurus rex.  

After ten, twelve, and fourteen hour work days, and broken sleep patterns, and a pandemic that changed us as a species,

fatigue turns into something we can’t even name.

So we anticipate aimless weekends with the raptors—

those un-clocked hours are for us 

to replenish and remember that we are adequate. 

Irresistible.

That we do, in fact, measure up, although we are not very well known and our pangea is plain, not lavish—

the entire jurassic world is strewn about and there are repairs pending.

There are loads of dishes and laundry waiting in the wings.

There are dreams we discussed decades ago pending like those repairs.

We realize we are important and so is the super continent we hack this life of ours on.

After disobeying the laws of motion, before something of even greater importance becomes extinct, we collide into a caress and find the courage to go from there.

The couch is our crash zone.

We crash as if we were cymbals.

We crash like the stocks of 1929.

Like airborne dolphins and the Marsh Harbor Cessna 402, we crash…

…as if we were test dummies.

We crash, like aw snap something went wrong while displaying this web page.

Like a wave that crests and steepens until it breaks. 

And then, 

we come to know one another more intimately through the intervals of silence.  

This is twelve years of marriage, and three dinosaurs. This is our beautiful evolution.

Clinnesha is a wife, mom, daughter/sister/auntie, literary artist, humanities scholar, and social entrepreneur. Her advocacy work is at the intersection of black/feminist thought, arts, culture, and community.