after, and before

My best friend the stegosaurus
knew that she had been forced
into a before, by the comet
which was living in the after,
burning in the atmosphere
following falling out of its home,
space, which missed it dearly
or maybe not at all, but,
unlike space, I will never recover—
call it survivor’s guilt.
She was gone before I
and the other birds
could say goodbye, and after,
the mammals told stories:

“I was in my burrow when it happened.
Before I felt the tremors,
I was sitting down for supper—
and then,
the earth shook and got hot,
and the giants screamed
and made room for me.
After the fact, the earth smelled,
worse than La Brea does
on a hot day.
Before the smell went away,
not even appetence could make me leave.
After the carcasses turned to bone,
I started going out again.”
They left their burrows
but I could not escape.

I believe in shades of grey,
lighter and lighter
like my best friend’s bones
in the sun, after the scent
of death dissolved,
until the picture disappears
and all you have is an idea of
what it could have been—
what am I looking at?
this all looks the same to me—but
I understand the appeal
of making the distinction
between the antecedent
and the aftermath.