lonesome 

in june of 2012 i was five years old / in june of 2012 the last pinta island tortoise was more than a hundred years old / when they found him / dead in his shell / with his neck stretched towards the watering hole / they called him lonesome george / and i think we could have been good friends.

endling. n. definition: the last known individual of a species.

george was an endling for over forty years / they found him in the 70s / before my mother was born / it was a waiting game / i think he knew / and that’s why he held on for so long

i’m glad i couldn’t comprehend extinction in 2012 / i’m glad he always had enough to eat / i’m glad we overlapped / even just for five years / even an ocean apart

sometimes when i wake up and everything is dark and still / save for the movement of my lungs / i become the human endling /  i might as well be / with no one else around / for all i know i could be playing the waiting game too / they’ll put me in an enclosure / that looks like a teenage girl’s bedroom / and call me lonesome / and say:

do you think she knows? do you think she’ll die slower if we tell her?