Telephone Tag. That's how we do it. No Sirens, bullhorns, weather radios. In the pitch black sky the phone rings, too early in the morning to be a late night "I love~love~love you" call, too late in the night to be an early morning wake up call....Seven minutes....
to pass the word, run barefoot onto the porch and yell for the neighbors..."You up?" "You?" "Yeah" "See ya when it's over".....
to gather three cats and the dog, the birth certificate box (which also holds a toothfairy letter, two shells, a butterfly wing, a zippo lighter with my initials on it, and the titles to cars I don't remember owning....
to wake up my sleeping child, now with child, and in five words or less, convince her to grab her pillow and crawl into the bathroom closet...
to say the quickie prayers...
to try Jonah's phone number one more time, again, and again....
to race back out of the closet and grab my Ruby Red's, construction boots for the afterlife....
to dive back in when I heard the sky fall.....
Three minutes in the rumbling, tumbling, swooshing, dipping, diving, tilt-a-whirl darkness....
and then unfolding,
paper dolls still stuck to the perforated edges,
bending one stretch at a time,
breaking free of the make-shift cellar...
Yup, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.....
