After the Flood

Silt is everywhere. Remnants of the river’s belly retched and left behind. Smells of wet fur, moldy clothes, sour socks rotting in the hamper. The sweet scent of earth overridden. It’s just dirt after all. Dirt with a little motor oil, sewage perhaps, animal feces, urine. I wear rubber boots. The carpet is covered in wet grit. The bottoms of the curtains stained dark. Walls splashed in dampness, as if someone took a coffee pot and twirled and twirled in the room, coffee flying on walls and furniture, staining everything brown. If left too long it molds, the brown turning to spider black. 

The neighbor across the street hired two men to clean up his house. They play Tejano music on a boom box because there is no electricity. Not yet. Refrains dance, floating through cracks, filling crevices. Notes suspended above putrid silt. I walk through the apartment touching this, picking up that. Nothing below two feet is spared. Objects are strewn about, books freed from stacks, lamps tipped over, personal details of life tossed by amused waters. On the floor beside my favorite chair — the red velvet one I rescued from the thrift store — is a theatre program. I pick it up, wipe the mud from its cover, but it tears. Names rip apart, the title disappears, dates erased. I was one of the actors, singing, dancing. Fresh out of college in my first role. A sparkling show with ushers and box seats. A show on a stage filled with lights and props of a grand scale. 

The men across the street sing as they throw items in the dumpster. Their voices underlie sounds of clanging and banging, sounds of preciousness discarded. I search the room for the untouched. What the ravenous hands of the river could not reach. The dirty dishes in the sink — which won’t get washed because there is no water. Not yet. Dried beans in the orange and green bowl on the counter. The chopping block with the diced translucent onion ready for soup before I ran. On the kitchen table the bronze pony my dad won at the State Fair. I was seven. He was sick. But still he managed to win at the horse racing game, shooting at the target, sending the animated horse towards lights and bells and a finish line. He won again and again, trading small for large and large for larger until the foot high pony was mine. I cradled it to my chest as he carried me on his shoulders, high above the flood of people, the smell of cotton candy surrounding us. The pony rears on hind legs, victorious above the dank. I stroke its mane, its majestic tail. Wrap my hand around its broad back. A cold strength rises through my palm while strains of Tejano guitar fill the room. 

(previously published in Ginosko Literary Journal in 2024)