Bonta imagines a museum where nature itself has become an exhibit, and the visitor is left to notice how much has already been lost. The opening image is the strangest: a goldfinch's last whistle, pressed under glass, slowly turns into earwax. A sound, something fleeting, becomes a dull, bodily residue. Nobody bothers to steal it, since looters prefer flashier things.
The displays that follow are quietly alarming. Leaves wither in one diorama, and in another farmers work exhausted soil. The sun sits in its own case upstairs, right above a whale's blowhole, as if the whole sky had been filed away with the animals. The speaker sounds calm and dry, almost like a tour guide, and that deadpan tone makes the loss sting more. The final line, about disposable vape pens of petrichor, the smell of rain on dry earth, is darkly funny. It suggests we now sell the scent of nature as a throwaway product. The mood is mournful, ironic, and a little eerie.