4.

The morning is sunny.
She sits on a soft leather couch
with red-gold embroidery
She is sipping green tea
from a round white cup.

She can imagine this as a memory-
impossibly clean, luxurious-

When she is looking back someday,
when the world has gone mostly
in flames
and she is huddling
in ashes, maybe
or under the black hulk of a tree

It will have come
quite abruptly
a sudden rush of hot air
the windows shaking,
her voice,
as if it were a thing separate from her
rising in a scream.