I am stunning, he says, as a decaying relic of the ancient times.
A Cenozoic fossil, lifted from the earth,
a Roman mosaic freed
from dozens of small hungry brushes dusting carefully.

How long have I been underneath it all? He asks me this.
How many centuries has my soul sat in the ground, gathering?

I click as I walk these modern roads. I lose bits of myself,
crumbling off my body like dry clay; it should not be long now
before I shatter completely, and get going.

Go back to where I came from, as he would say.
But I have only ever known these streets, these sidewalks,
places he says I meander through, as a ghost of antiquity.

I do not want to alarm him. I do not wish to break his vision.
But my rarified form, is merely a woman
drinking white mocha at a local café every Saturday,
penning adequate, indulgent poems.