Elizabeth Grant

You do it to make sure you’re awake | Grace Miller

I wonder if it might pick us up and blow us into the ocean. I tell you come on, let’s start sailing and never stop. You talk about tariffs. Okay, then let’s fix up an ancient car that shouldn’t run, drive all the way to Mexico.You say

you forgot your passport. Back home in the library, your hands brush the glitter off my face. It falls on the carpet, where people’s shoes grind it down. I hope sometime soon the statues lose patience with all this wanting,

come back to life, and explain to us how to go from young to old back to ourselves. It is getting late, and

laundry piles up in both our bedrooms. I trace the burning fairytale on your shoulder and mine you. We feel old, but we’re not, right? Is this what youth feels like? Tell me I’m wrong.

45

Leland Quarterly | Spring 2022

San Francisco Earthquake

Elizabeth Grant

Chamomile tea cools on the window sill, a finch in the doorway. A woman is on the floor, hair in the strands of the carpet. The puddle of her blood is a parallelogram opening. She has never had a looser grip. The firefighters breach the broken door to find her later. The carpet melts into the concrete foundation of her tan house on Steiner Street.

46