You never remember the day-after-disaster.
I can't remember the taste in my mouth
when I awoke that morning,
worst-day-of-my-life high-school-sweetheart-
holding-explosives morning after,
but I know it was bitter
and I know it felt like sludge down my throat.
I might have asked: Did that really happen?
Am I dreaming? Am I losing it?
But in truth, I probably rolled over,
checked the time, yawned, crawled out,
because you don't spell out disasters
when you are still cleaning them up,
and even if you did write it all out,
the morning was just another day
to chomp down on,
swallow the sludge, and move on.
Smoke blasts against the window
in nuclear winter, disease rampant in the lungs
of every other college kid and here we are,
cleaning out our pipes with plastic fans,
hoping-its-enough-to quell-a-disaster.
I lean to my friend and she says,
"We are the eye of the storm.
The window's fogged but somehow
held hands are clear." And I realized that
disasters don't feel like disasters
until you've clawed your way out,
blood-spitting-black-nail-scraping,
because to breathe it in would kill you
and you'd never stop hacking.
And as days trickle on with
Apocalyptic Winter pressing September,
you'd almost forget Earth
was splitting at seams. Because there's
this orange sun that still rises every morning
like it doesn't know we are half-way
to pleading for darkness.
I could ask: Is this happening?
But instead, I'll laugh at approaching
ghosts, call the city below mine
even if it can't love me back, and know
that in this eye all you can do is swallow hard
and watch for that sun to pass over once again.
Someday, it'll be the day-after-disaster.
And after that, another day will pass.