Quake
Thunder: Intimately Intricate & The Writing Cooperative Contest
A burn is on this ground.
Electric fire at the fork
reversing steps yet to be taken,
blazing a scorching X
where you smashed in
and turned my mind away
from your ice and fire slicing
markers onto the maps
I keep.
So many maps showing the way
inside and outside the craters
in my heart and on the skin
I’ve stitched up tight.
Red marks painted on the trails
like an inky stew I can’t call blood.
Not when hope has to ride along.
You sliced in from the edges,
cracked the sky above me,
your call slipping into the frame
like something sweet but caustic,
spilling before I knew.
And my mind swam too fast
to hold back
in the swirling smoke you made
of my thoughts.
But I kept track of the new states
you drew, and wrote them down
true like the open spaces
they’d always been.
