What is found outside are car alarms collapsing into sound. An eerily glimpse of sunlight and bird chirp and shadow casting of branch against small rooftop and leaf shimmy and church bell.
What is also found are the wanderings of water with no other place to go than haunt the tunnels and potholed streets and unconscious tree stumps.
When light is taken away, what is left. What may be plucked from the darkness.
*shapes of candle flickers
*tracing laughter with tongue and fingertips
*making love or masking love or marking loath
*sleep
*words stuck onto unseen walls with spit and torn books for when the light arrives again
* * *
Sirens have been consistent throughout this storm. All this wind. All this name-dropping. Sandy. Sandy. Sandy. When will the humans be allowed underground again, Sandy. Where did the homeless ones go if you’ve added to that number and the shelters are full. Where are we putting them, Sandy? Everyone keeps talking about the food they are cooking, the food they are eating, the food they are stuffing up their full bodies and I wonder how many welcome mats no longer have a porch to nap on. And I wonder how many photographs got washed away.
A woman in Staten Island gives birth as the death toll rises to 50. A new baby fits inside the palm of a young mother’s hand while funerals are planned with no way of getting there.
People wander streets mourning the dead, mourning the corpses left in the street, held captive by police tape.
Say a prayer. One you’ve never practiced before. One you’ve been saving for a time like this. Say it twice. Keep saying it. Stick it into the ground like a rooted seed. Wait for it to grow into something. Like a new house. Or a sturdy bridge. Or a roof. Or a fourth wall. Or a staircase. Or a walkway back to the city that never sleeps that may need a nap after all this…
Aimee Herman 