Competition Nine Highly Commended: In the Dinosaur Museum, the Bones are Exposed by Kathy Hoyle

The bones are mostly scarred and ancient-beige, not science-white, like in the books I used to read with Ma.

The signs say, ‘do not touch the displays.’

I want to touch them, to pull out the sharp wires holding the vertebrae together and breathe long breaths into the hollow, empty bone-spaces. I want to give the bone-dinosaurs life, wake them, and watch them roam free.

I think, at first, the bone-dinosaurs will be slow. They might need to stretch and curl, until their beige-bones creak-click back into place. They’ll raise their great heads, shake out their sails and horns and spikes, and bellow out dino-greetings.

Maybe, after an hour or two, they’ll grow fresh new skin that stretches across their beige-bones. I’ll be the first to see their colours emerge, scute and scale in brilliant blues, forest greens, autumnal yellows.

The bone-dinosaurs – with patchy blue-green-yellow newly grown skin – will gather in the huge lobby and marvel at each other.

I’ll buy dino-kibble from the gift shop, pour great heaps of it into dino-bowls. The bone-dinosaurs will feed – sauropods, therapods, ornithopods together – forgetting that, maybe, they should be eating each other instead.

When the guide tells us that sixty-six million years ago an asteroid smacked into Earth and vaporised the dinosaurs, I cry. How scared they must have been, looking up to the night sky, hearts thumping with fear.

When Ma undressed you could see her beige-bones too, hollow and sharp, under patchy blue-green-yellow skin.

Maybe she should have worn a sign that said, ‘do not touch the display.’

Maybe she left because she was afraid an asteroid would hit?

I think I see her sometimes, at the park, on the street, in the lobby of the dinosaur museum. She’s roaming free and happy, in newly-grown skin.

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