Velociraptor Tara Campbell
She loves dinosaurs in a visceral way, inexplicable, grown woman
playing with bright plastic toys, pint-sized dinos that bring her joy
despite all of the greed and violence and pain in her newsfeed, even though
she couldn't identify more than a few: brontosaurus, triceratops, of course
T-Rex, and those smaller guys (what are they?), tiny tyrannosaurs hunting in
packs, darting through the Jurassic, weaving around ten-foot ferns on
razor-toed feet while barking out intel only they understand—I'm here,
slow down, it's over there—and together they bring down a beast many
times their own size, maybe even as big as the one in the palm of her hand,
Accountability Dino, she calls him, the desk brontosaurus, head
cocked atop the long grey sway of his neck, as if to ask, Have you done
enough work to please them today? but this time she googles the hump
on his head and finds out he's more like a brachiosaurus with a bronto's
tail, a mutt, she mutters, and he pulls that dissatisfied look that
says, That won't get them off your back, or your front for that matter,
and she puts him back down and says, Okay, I just need to look up one
more thing, and once she finds it she knows what to call herself, what
to call all of her kind, keen-eyed and hungry, aching to run together and
slash at the patriarchs, bringing the whole thing down.
Read her postcard.
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