terremoto
Emma Hardison


We’ve been waiting for one since 1989
The earth’s crust like a pregnant stomach, swelling too slowly to see it moving
But once the due date passes, the two weeks that follow are full of tension
She gives birth and even though the father knew it would happen
He never expected to be a papa so soon

A 7.3 on the Richter scale,
Bears crawl out of sidewalk boundaries and every organic egg cracks simultaneously
Golden folding chairs melt into pepto bismol pools
the side of a bent fork scrapes them off the edge of plate tectonics
Into a plastic ziplock bag to be frozen and heated up later when mother isn’t home in time to make dinner

The house was full of children
Canned food castles towered over their heads
as the husband and wife smacked their lips against each others
while the structure collapsed on them
The dog and the baby and the sister were all played by the same girl
So only four funerals had to be attended

In the tsunami of broken asphalt, there was a parade
Balloons lifted by the atmosphere in their lungs
The people who saw it from planes remarked about the dust that rose beneath them
how it descended from their eyes and settled in their stomachs
 
 
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