fruitless.

Ten days after the earthquake and six days after the aftershocks, she discovers it’s gone.  She looks everywhere: the linen closet, the old bureau, below the kitchen sink, all the likely places.  And then she thinks of the books that had fallen from the living shelf, the piles she made of them, and spends a fruitless afternoon opening and closing each one in search for it.  In her despair, she searches the attic that no one atticks in, the new damage from the rumble of the ground: crevices that blossomed in the brick path, the uncertain slant of the driveway, an exposed tree root, a surprised roof shingle.  The more she searches the less she remembers until she is only searching and the thing, whatever it was, is just a thing that she can’t find.  And the search becomes its own search.  This is ten days after the earthquake, six days after the aftershocks.