Pale Quakes.

They weren’t the kind that broke things.

Not dishes, not bones.

No sound at all,

just a trembling

under the skin of the day.

You thought you were imagining it.

The way the ground seemed to sigh,

the glass shiver slightly

with no wind.

You learned to keep still,

to listen.

Some disturbances are inherited

not from the earth,

but from the body’s memory

of harm.

You felt them mostly at night.

The sheet lifting,

the breath caught

just before sleep.

No one else seemed to notice.

That was its cruelty:

the tremor that alters only you.

And still,

you never left.

You stayed near the fault line.

Not out of faith,

but recognition.

Even the quietest violence

needs a witness.

Even the smallest shift

can undo a structure

if it leans the wrong way.