Self-Portraits in Jurassic Park

if I must be all the evil in the world,
the box made by my father gods
to fence me in,

if the gaps in my sequence
lie, waiting to be
replaced, recovered,

if it is easier to devour
the unsuspecting,
if what they don’t have

to feel in themselves
until they see me,
the sickle claw I brandish,

if I was the villain of this movie, but
if they did deserve it, though,
if I was not the killer

but not the final girl either,
if what they fear has always been
the softness of their own bellies,

if their guts, if their necks
and stomachs, their fluids,
what they look like unseamed,

spilled onto the floor
in front of god and everyone,
if maybe then they will remember,

then, when they found me
the most graceful shape
in all time’s creation, my bones

pieced back together, thought they held the vial,
the stolen life, thought themselves each
the one who invented me,

thought they would place themselves in my mouth,
look back at the photo later and remember
just how little they feared, then,