5 of 10 *Note: I did not know who this metaphor was for or where it would be used, until today.

The bottles clatter outside in the trash can.
I know you are home and what you are doing
Before I ever see your face.
I feel the plates of our world buckle and bend.
I hear the rumbling of tectonics,
The shifting of the way things are.
When you finally stumble in, fall up the stairs,
Everything I already know is confirmed.

And I smile like nothing is different
Because, in a way, nothing really is.
You must feel like a Greek god
When you move the Richter scale.
At least, that is what I figure.
I know, much more than you realize,
How hard a man has to fight for control
And what it feels like to have the world against you.

But that will never make you right.
You are sorry every single time
And that helps.
That helps until the next.
There always is a next time.
More bottles. More words. More shame.
Yet, it only takes one good night's sleep
In the arms of forgiveness to forget.

I should probably thank you though;
But I think that you would assume
That I was making fun of you.
I mean it though.
Your earthquakes have taught me
So many things like what disaster really is,
How to pray, where exactly I stand,
And the deceitfulness of ideas like security.

It has taken years of growing up,
But I have finally learned
How to be more than a survivor.
That, also, is something I am thankful for.
Getting by was never enough for living.
However, I am not fool enough to thank you.
You, sir, cannot take all the credit.
May I remind you, that things do not have to be this way?

Things do not have to be the way they are.
God forgive me, then remind me,
If I ever, ever let go of that.
And the way they are is wrong.
This constant shifting but never changing
Will not be forever.
You may be the Greek god of plate-tectonics
But no one worships the pantheon anymore.