While my son rattles on about dinosaurs I

contemplate the futility of life

I understand why the Evangelicals are skeptical. These strange feathered beasts. Fanged monsters. Sharp-clawed short-armed freaks. The plesiosaur is technically a marine reptile. The brontosaurus doesn’t actually exist. Or maybe it does again? So much has changed in the brief history of my living. So much has stayed the same. Pterosaurs are not dinosaurs at all, my son informs me. The things I thought I knew have been lost to time. I tell him we once owned a machine that rewound VHS tapes; it worked at twice the speed of the VCR. He can’t fathom a reason for this device which is how I feel about AR-15s and every vitamin for sale on Instagram. Could a gun kill a dinosaur, he wonders and I try not to picture him shot dead while learning math. I have no idea. Probably yes. Definitely not. I understand so little about evolution and extinction. One thing changing, something else dying away. He asks me how life begins and I speak vaguely of sperm and ovum, some notion of love but he’s talking about the world—how did it get here, when will it end. I haven’t the energy for science or poetry. To explain how the stars are our kin. Imagine a day when dinosaurs return, our bones drifting in sea-rise graves. They’ll talk of God and mysteries. Dust clouds. Intolerable heat. How we mowed each other down. We go back and forth about which dinosaurs are our favorites and I settle on the triceratops because it’s one of the few I can remember. He picks one I’ve never heard of before and I nod along, say that’s a good one, though I’ve already forgotten its name.