We Had Words

By Vona Groarke

Another hurricane, the third this month, strikes at the heart
of a city far from here. Tomorrow, its leftovers will fill our drain
and leak into the basement to advance on our low-tide mark
a seepage shot with grit and aftermath. My sleep tonight
will be a skimming stone affair: every hour fulfilling an ellipsis
predicted by the last. This day, all day, is hypothetical.
When it steals inside an offhand dusk, not even I
will muster a send-off beyond the thought of dust in darkness,
a breathless stowaway, like your words on the flip side
of my tongue, one almost completely slipped inside another.
I was saying, likening the way you like to single out
a single word to bear the weight of this, to boarded windows
and spineless pines bent double in thin air; cars afloat
on streets that have lost the run of themselves by now;
a casket in a clutch of branches, an item of clothing
tied to a TV aerial, for help. It bypasses us completely.
Your full leg, white as that whip-lashed shirt, has drifted
over mine. A siren flares on the pike. It plays itself out
in hours perched on high ground; our breath brimming over;
our new words islanded and arch, to steer us wide of harm.