There was a tremor
but nothing fell.
No dishes cracked.
No trees split.
The house stood
like a good lie.
They called it
a dead quake—
movement
without aftermath.
The earth
flinching
from something
it couldn’t name.
You said:
I felt it.
I felt the shift.
But no one else
stumbled.
No clocks stopped.
No one opened a door
to flee.
Only you
with your foot on the stair,
not knowing
if it would hold.
Afterward,
you kept testing the floorboards.
Stepping hard.
Waiting for the break
that never came.
Isn’t that worse—
the damage
that leaves no mark?
To walk away
and not be able
to prove
what moved
beneath you?
Even now,
when the wind stills,
you listen
for the echo
of that silence.
Not the quake itself.
But the pause
before it—
when something
decided
not to shatter
after all.
Whew! Love it.
Very powerful poem! Great job! 👏 👏👏