The Essentials
  by Misty Blakesley

The darkest days of winter
And a cold leak wets the carpet at the heart of my home:
20,000 dead in an earthquake worlds away,
A lone survivor in an entire neighborhood.
An anonymous foot sent over oceans to the parents of a dead soldier,
mistakenly.

I think I am separate from others’ pain.
Sometimes by a newspaper, sometimes a radio,
Sometimes I don’t even know about it.
It’s hard to believe
This is the universe unfolding as she should.

Maybe she’s screaming:
Live as if the best we imagined,
We could.