What Happens Underground

The door was heavy, thick concrete,

the kind that teaches you

the way the earth could trick you,

bury you beneath its street.

I went down the stairs behind her,

toward a light that's old,

a yellow bulb, too cold,

the kind that makes you shiver.

The tornado warning was real,

the sirens wailed and screamed,

but what I came to feel

was something from a dream.

The earth pressing down,

the basement floor below,

the smell of the buried town,

the way that basements know.

I was seven, I was small,

my mother kept us down,

and I couldn't breathe at all,

couldn't make a sound.

Hours that felt like years,

the house above my head,

the weight of all these fears,

the certainty I'd be dead.

The storm has passed, it's fine,

my friend's basement is okay,

the tornado didn't sign

our lives away today.

But I'm still here, still pressed,

still feeling that door close,

still trapped within my chest,

still knowing how it goes.

There are places the sky can't reach,

and sometimes that's not safe,

sometimes that's the beach

where you can't escape.