I have tried to write these poems before, you know, the ones about the infa‐
mous storm and its majestic violence. The floodwater that swallowed a city
then sat still as night. I think often of the things it took from us that we’ll
never know we could have had. Nostalgia is a well‐intentioned wound.
Counterfactuals are a bed of thorns in a room with nowhere else to lay your
head. I imagine what could have been but never was. The Christmases with
my children in the home where I once opened presents. Kicking a soccer ball
with my daughter against the same playground wall where I imagined a
life of goals and glory. That home is now silent as a sky of smoke. That wall
is no longer a wall, but a pile of wood in a lonely field. I tremble at what I
already know, that my children will not know this city beyond the holidays
and funerals that bring them here. That I no longer know the city I have
always worn like a tattoo. I still remember the city as something it was kept
from becoming. I am still looking for a language not covered in mud.