Earthquake Season
We can hardly tell anymore
whether the earth's trembling wakes us
or my seismometer heart.
Sometimes your aftershock footsteps
make me cry out. I'm not talking
about anything as trivial as the sun
but the loss of it.
What if I die without you
on the greasy tiles of a Taco Bell
in that radioactive light
where no one ever hopes
to look beautiful?
And yet this morning,
the floor rocked me
gently to the breakfast table
and you were there
with sunlight on the cactus.
And the only death I found
buried deep in the paper
as if beneath the collapse
of a house: a boy not yet fourteen
shot in the neck
under an open sky.
Jessica Goodheart