showed new shoes to a dinosaur,
ductile, blinking, microchips in heels.
He sighed, diminutive foreclaws writhing
in that nervous, conscious way T's have.
"That's how it started, you know,"
his voice nasal as Notre Dame.
"What?" I pranced, watching my feet flash.
"The beginning of the end."
That got to me, stilled
first me, then my shoes.
We two tarried, trembling, anticipatory,
pretending to wait on wisdom.
"We put chips in our heels,
to better flip o'er ankylosaurs,
then gloved our talons,
to rend prey at a distance."
Cool! My heels flexed in envy.
"Every exoskeletal enhancement
drove some part of us away, further
from the essence, until at last
our spirits fled, leaving behind
bodies that could do anything,
selves that could touch nothing."
He weighed me with predator's gimlet,
then turned, tail trail twisting after.
"That's where ghosts come from…"
ellipsed in the air behind him.
I dispersed it with a grand jette,
savoring the fact that headless
nikes knew better than I,
better than an extinct tyrant.
And who believed in ghosts
when your shoes adjust to every step?
Besides, I thought, at Christmas
come the matching gloves!