love letter to a town sunk by a dam
On days when the sun ravages the earth I can see where you buried your dead—cracked tombstones, paint stripped off the bones, three-hundred-year-old names lost to time and the tide. Yes, the tide, the deep blue, water trapped where it was never supposed to stay for very long. I know it’s not really a tide. Let’s forget about science for a moment.
Think about the water: silent, dark. Endless, or at least it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be your grave. It was supposed to be your end. But on days when the sun ravages the earth I can see where you buried your dead, and where you tried to find God in the whorls of the wooden pew every Sunday, and where you lived and breathed and sang in the afternoons, laundry hanging on bent wire lines.
Nobody remembers now but you, waiting, quiet, in the bottom of a pool, unless you wake up on a day when the sun scalds and water turns to air and your children come to visit, running their fingers along the old concrete and whispering, I remember, I remember.