Our Minds Were Not Made

Nate Pillman
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Our minds were not made to understand the time it took for reptiles to fly or for gas to form rock to form water. Hair fading, thanks to heat. Four legs to two, thanks to grass. Africa to Australia, Africa to Europe, Africa to Asia, Asia to here, thanks to protein. Just yesterday, I looked at a photo of my father at thirty and could hardly breathe—all that life, once vast, now shrunken, like hands designed for tools.

Nate Pillman was the first place fiction winner of The Puritan’s 2012 Thomas Morton Memorial Prize and a finalist for The Tusculum Review’s 2013 Poetry Prize. His work has also appeared or is forthcoming in PANK, New Ohio Review, Bayou Magazine, and Mid-American Review. He lives in Tucson, AZ.