“Ohhhh shit…”

That quake woke me up—
     not cause I felt it, here

     not physically, anyway.

I was gonna ramble today
      about small things,
      the slow countdown,

      the single digits on the calendar
      pulling at the seams of every hour,
      stretching _way_ longer than they should.

But this?
This is something better.
The Universe lobbed one over the plate, (finally)
    why not swing for the fences?

Something shifted under Atlanta,
    and I know—
    *exactly*

    how _that_ feels.

Raised in the land of 12,000 quakes, (every year)
    where even the furniture learns to sway,
    those early morning shakes were my norm.

And Us?

We’ve got our own early morning shakes—
                      the jittery kind,
           too-much-coffee missing you,
 restless feet pacing bedrooms at 5 AM,
            thumb hovering over “send”…

The way these last days,
    before we line up again

    keep rattling through my bones like personal daily aftershocks.

And when we’re together?
Well, those shakes mean something altogether different.

The tremors turn soft,
    the missing-you jitters
    slide into something a whole lot sweeter.

A gentle quake when night turns to morning,
      whispered words with a little gravel,
            fingers tracing familiar paths,
                 soft shifts in the sheets,
                      hands pulling closer,

               a seismic pulse all our own.

The earth had its say today.
But you and I?
We’ve been doing our own shaking for a while now.

Early mornings.
Late nights.

(all the hours in between)

Distance better be careful
  when it comes to us…

  now we’ve got the ground itself
  wagging its finger at the clock.

A little rumble
  just to remind us what we're missing,
  and what's still waiting when these days
  finally,
  mercifully…

  stop
     shaking
       us
         apart.