Rachelle Sierra

How to Survive in Earthquake Country 

You could sleep through most of them,
missing the deep rumble, the bending walls,
the tinkling of fragile cups and chandeliers.
You could slumber, unencumbered by midnight’s
meandering faults. In some places the plates creep
so slowly, earthquakes take years. A magnitude 7
quake can release gradually, entire countries drifting
subtle centimeters while we stand on them, falling
in love and learning algebra. For us, one day
becomes dozens, becomes years, then we are
gazing at ourselves in past tense, the world having
changed while we slept, while we worried about
the weather. For the world, this doesn’t really matter.
The truest facts of this place have little to do
with us. The rest of it, we make up—
the buildings, the borders, the governments.
We have barely been here at all, and no matter what
monuments we erect to whichever men or gods,
this planet has always been on its own mission:
Cradle what is living. Become unrecognizable.

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Rachelle Sierra is a Bay Area-born, PDX-based, Filipino-American poet and linguist. Rachelle’s work has appeared in Frozen Sea, FeelsZine, Epiphany Lit, and more. You can find her on IG @rachellesierra37, as a 2026-2028 In Surreal Life Fellow, and walking around Portland gawking at trees.