Fault Lines

You taught me to fear the silences.
Like the eerie quiet of nature before a seismic event,
They descended, ominous
Harbingers of doom.
Every pause pregnant with dread
A warning that disaster was imminent.

Each one left me scrambling
To uncover what horrible
Transgression triggered the
Latest tremors,
And what I could do to appease
The demon.

But that was as effective
As the ancient priestess
Sacrificing to the god of the volcano
Desperate to stave off eruption.

The explosion always came.

How odd now it feels to dismantle the
Inner seismometer,
Lose the habit of duck and cover,
And realize that I wasn't responsible
For the shifting along your fault lines.

Now that I've moved away from  the epicenter
I see clearly
Your continental drift was beyond
My control.