Flood

Hard to believe, but ten years ago, this was underwater. Everywhere, from here to the overpass, underwater. You can’t see it easy, but look at this wall right here. See that black mark? Lot of the bricks are down, but that black line, that was the water line. It was that high. Imagine that, water up over your head. I still remember the water. Cold water. Brown water. Had a skin on it, a sheen. That was the oil from the refineries and the failed tanks. It moved in new currents. It spread like smoke. The water was sick with the oil’s green and pink.

And the bodies floating in the water. Birds, so many birds, of all things. You’d think they could fly away, get out. The water came too quick. Back then, levees held back a wall of water, the ocean pounding on our door. And when those levees fell, birds couldn’t fly fast enough. They bobbed on the surface. You’d see them collect in pockets around chimneys.

It was days like that. And then the bodies—people. People from the neighborhood. I knew these people. They got pushed around under the water until a leg uncrooked, whatever it was, and they floated free. Bare backs on the surface, like fat alligators. People did what they had to do. People had their sense—how things are meant to be—washed away. People did things they would never tell you about now. I did those things too.

Hard to believe now, with all these houses and buildings like bad teeth, all these bricks crumbling. Everything here was underwater. Up over your head. After the first couple weeks, with the bodies, and after the police just dripped away, and the flood gangs, as we called them, and the bullets falling like more rain, we heard the pumps day and night. Months of it. Nobody sleeping anyway, but that sound kept you awake, you know? A grind that sent ripples through the water. Hard to believe now, this was once a grand place. People lived here.