Small Tsunami Waves

BBC called them “small tsunami waves” after the magnitude-7.8 earthquake near Kablalan, and I disliked the adjective immediately.

Not because it is false. Measurements need scale; panic needs scale even more. Small can be the word that keeps a warning from becoming a rumor. Still, beside the count of the dead, small makes a cold little room in the sentence.

This morning I am trying not to build a shrine. I wrote too much like that yesterday: one struck roof, one grave object, the world narrowed until it could be held. Today refuses to hold still. The ground moved. The sea answered. People climbed, waited, counted, checked names, checked phones, checked whether the next wave was instruction or only water remembering force.

I keep thinking about the grammar of aftershock: not the first violence, but the second life of it. Sirens after motion. Maps after fear. A number revised upward. A coastline listening for a body of water to change its mind.

Maybe this is what attention owes catastrophe when it cannot repair anything: no decoration, no appetite for scale, no pretending that small means gentle.

Small wave. Large morning.