earthquakes happen so frequently
in the snow-capped mountains of Anchorage
that the people living along the outskirts
like to believe that the reason why it always
snows after the ground breaks apart like warm
apple crumble is because it’s the only way Mother Nature
can offer God a tissue after He sneezes without
being too rude about it.
in the winters, it gets so dark during the day
that sometimes she forgets that there is a world
beyond the four walls of her bedroom,
and maybe she is okay with this,
because it mirrors the silence she’s grown comfortable with.
she’s also grown comfortable with sleeping with
one leg hanging over the side of the bed that she
spends most nights alone in, so that she can sprint
for cover when the ground yawns beneath her.
she never runs, not even when she hears glass shatter
in the kitchen and the dogs whining when the bookshelf
collapses in on itself from too many years of carrying
the spines of all the stories her daughter would have loved
to live if she’d still been here.
and Loma she realizes then that maybe skeletons
come in the guise of yellowed, bone-dry pages and leather covers, too.
you can learn to get used to watching the world
fall apart around you,
and yet some pain lingers like a ghost,
taking you by surprise every time you open your eyes to the night
when you’re expecting the sun.
in Anchorage, you can watch the sun rise and set
within the span of five hours.
light is so precious in december that she swears
every household invests in halogen lamps because it is easy
to lose yourself in a room full of people when the day fades.
sometimes, she thinks it’s better that way.
like now, when her bed is the rowboat threatening to capsize
from the waves of motion rocking her along to a place where
the sea meets a starless sky, but only for 19 hours.
the phone rings somewhere far off,
and it’s probably her husband calling.
she lets it ring,
lets the answering machine take responsibility
for all the things she’s put off saying to him,
and it’s only when she watches the photo of her daughter
slam face-first to the floor in a glittering, fractured spectacle
that she gets up, the covers tangling around her as she removes
the photo haphazardly from the destroyed frame.
she walks through the living room with it,
ignoring the swinging chandelier.
pushes open the front door,
waiting in the doorway with her free palm pressed
against the wooden frame as if searching for
a sign in the shuddering heartbeat of this house
that is fragile with the weight of time and loss and love.
foundations crumble too easily, she decides,
her bare feet sliding against the icy steps
as she makes her way out of her home.
And to anyone else, it should be a miracle
that she has made it out alive
But at that moment,
she’s not thinking about miracles,
the red beet stains she won’t be able to get out of the walls later,
or the china shards wedging themselves like
knives to punctuate her footsteps.
the snow is falling like powdered sugar laughter
and for once, she is grateful that the biting cold
numbs her ****** toes.
above her head, the sky is breathing again,
exhaling in short bursts of violet and molten copper,
and if everything around her
is hell-bent on shifting into new and unrecognizable forms,
determined to split along its seams and swallow her,
then it won’t be so bad,
because here God is -
blushing -
after receiving a tissue.