A chimney skewers your bed.

A roof slices through your living room carpet.

Your bathtub ruptures: broken pipes spew everywhere,
a garage door emerges through the tiled floor. Walls crumble
like bread. Windows ram up your counters and cabinets,

and so many anxious eyes bulge against the panes.

They say there is nothing you can do.

Frying eggs at the stove or nodding off on the couch
watching TV—you will never hear their whispers leak
through the dirt as those homes below grow faster,

root and twist, burrow like lightning.

You will never know why.

All you can do is run, abandon your house
when that home below bursts like a geyser, gushes
the shreds of your house and your loved ones into the sky.

They say when you flee to look back at the new front door.

They say when it opens you must be far away, out of reach.

[Editor’s Note: Publication of this poem was made possible by a gift from Emmett Smith during our annual Kickstarter.]