human geography

Tectonic plates
the tremor, the residual
heat the struggle of two
wanting to move.

Where will they take us, she thinks
there is only so much room to move
so much water to displace and cities
to sink, where will we go and will it stop?

She presses her hand to the floor
in the apartment in the small living room
and imagines she can feel the heat from below
the neighbours breathing, cycling oxygen and carbon dioxide
the blood and mineral stores
just like the core of the earth
small flecks of iron propelling blood
to trap oxygen to push carbon to ensure that breath
continues; that a hand might be warm to the touch
or a cheek, her cheek, as she places it against the wood
floors, listening to hear someone breathe down below

When they make love, she can hear them
bodies grinding against bodies, bones
hot under the pressure, the tremor of
everything that has come before and she thinks
it’s the weight of history that pushes the plates
so they are both loving and wearing away at
the core of what keeps this whole thing together
the whole hot heart of the earth in there
keeping everything together, just waiting
for the day when it can finally let go
let all the plates slide home and all the cities sink,
taking all the lovers with them, a new sea
of oxygen and carbon, the way bones in the ground
keep giving long after extinction.