No Big One

I don’t think there’ll be a Big One in California
The tectonic plates here jar daily
with the changing of the lights
uncertainty shrouds us like the smog hanging on the trees
at Griffith Park.
Everything is a potential devastation
crippling egos, felling those standing tall
knocking down dream-homes and those in-the-making
swallowing up those too small to face the Big Questions
The Big One landed earlier today
when you shoved me into the wall because you
things in your life are heating up
I cut myself on the broken glass of lemonade I was
preparing for you
but you didn’t turn to see it until
you’d made all your dramatic calls to family who were held captive
in their own Big One, hundreds of miles away.

it’s only ever been a series of Big Ones.

Our circus spins plates in tectonic tantrum
smashing hopes and dashing the hopes that in all this
we can still find safety
when it’s okay to be scared
but no longer okay to run the other way.