In the mirror on the dresser, reflections return in their own time, hauling back each twist and grimace from the liminal space between i and r. If i ruled the world, I sing to myself, recalling scientific formulae and Sunday evening family viewing round a monochrome box. It was predictable programming, with songs from Broadway hits and jokes tapped from stones on the Dorset coast, along with all the other fossils. My mother had a passable voice and would sing along, while I remained silent, daydreaming of dinosaurs and imagining their songs. I’d picture them dipping to drink on the bank of a melodious lake, their voices like light beneath the furthest stars, their reflections a Dalíesque trick, in which they resembled the smile lines round my mother’s eyes. They return now to the mirror on the dresser, 66 million years after they became extinct, and it strikes me once again how much I resemble my mother, though I still can’t sing.

Bio: Oz Hardwick