In the grasses of the farm we grew up on: two early rodents splayed
on a blanket with our long-necks. We dressed in cotton, felt the lips of long-

necks bristle in our palms. Ted & Brunhilda—gentle giants, swathed
in feathers. Our wretched little vermin fingers snatched snacks

from nests. With yolk on her whiskers, my sister asked me if
they could’ve caused their own extinction by eating each other’s

eggs. No, for them, the end came in an upside-down world, after
hundreds of colossal eruptions called the rain back, left the grey sun

blinking up at them from under its blanket of volcanic ash. Light fell
like streamers through the leaves. I climbed up a trunk, dropped

a crow’s egg on her head and listened for the crack of the shell breaking
over her skull. For one hundred million years we lived like that, little

laughing bellies skimmed the dirt as we scurried under tremendous legs.
We loved them because they towered over us and buried our shadows

under their own. We loved them because they made us feel
prehistoric. Now I remember, the one with colic wasn’t my long-neck

mare but her limping brachiosaurus. We watched in secret
from the canopy like our sneaky rat ancestors as our dad and his friends

chained up its four boney legs and hauled its body into a trailer.
The hooves made a clunking sound like wooden wind chimes

in the dark. I went out into the field, alone, in search of nests,
or a giant’s spine for my sister to scale. In life, we learn things too late

to change them. I sat on the back of my giant but I still couldn’t see it:
the heads of other mammals bobbing up through the grass, the asteroid

that was coming for us and always had been.

Taylor Zantingh is a writer, teacher, and musician living in a self-converted camper-van in Toronto, Canada. Her band, Doctors Hate Her, released their self-produced EP, 'Bite the Hand that Kneads You' in November of 2019. She is currently completing her Honours Bachelor Degree in Creative Writing & Publishing at Sheridan College.