NaPoMo Day 27 Poem

Photo from Black & WTF Photos:
Prompt courtesy Rach: Write a poem about prom night: While the seniors dance at Prom Night in Some Small Town, Middle America--a town of about 3,000—a tornado hits the town, destroying about a third of it. When the kids emerge from the dance, they discover what's happened.

We the survivors of prom night
didn’t feel our town crush, old receipt to the tornado’s
cracked fist. We thought the ceiling rained glitter
on our hair. Our town is small, but enough of us
in this sweating gymnasium and we can repopulate.
We’re not thinking of this as the guitarist riffs
something from the 70s, safe for our chaperones,
something that makes our backs bend, brings us closer
to the floor and to each other. Prom ends like it always
ends, desperate embraces like this is our last night.
Like we have survived a disaster. And then we realize
we have survived a disaster. We have lost our limos
to the spin. We have lost our stop signs our diner our cherry
blossoms. We do not panic, try to find home, get lost. Funny
how the landmarks guided us before. We see our house
has been scattered. In the middle of the yard, a small table
with our black cat on it. We find a pile of homethings: sewing
kit, dreamcatcher, energy saving light bulbs. How does a tornado
decide what it can do without? We scatter playing cards across
the ground. We meet a skeleton. We ask, who were you?
He can’t talk, but he breathes notes from the ribs
of that horn. A melody we don’t want to hear.
We plug our ears with bulbs.