Arielle Hebert
People couldn’t help but give them names,
to tell one from another.Some seasons exhaust the alphabetnaming violences.
Six months of repeated beatings,lightning strikes and heat waves.
One hurricane can alter a coastline, a life.
Ours is a culture of disaster.Entire families board up the windowsthen go surfing. Sandbag the foundationthen jetski the drowned streets.
Kids get out kites and canoes.Even if there’s no powerand the bottled water’s running out.
This is how we grew up, taking paradisetides one day at a time, holding handsat three funerals my senior year alone.
We tossed in our handful of dirt.
We hugged the mothers of the dead.
After parties became hereafter parties.
We danced in our funeral clothes,
kept late night vigils,
post-apocalyptic parties,under-the-sea parties,
no-tomorrow parties.
We treaded grief like water,
missed hurricanes in the off season,
when chaos ebbed enoughfor us to see clearly, all the damage.
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