The Opiate, Fall Vol. 19
Slow Flood: Detroit 2019 Caroline Maun Before, when I thought of floods, I thought hurricane, broken levees, that house-to-house searching, helicopter footage and johnboat rescues, a hundred-mile cyclone of torrent bending trees in one direction south of the eye and the other north. That trip down I-95 when every curb had appliances like big-game carcasses pale and steamy in the sun. Summer in Baltimore when the storm surge turned every basement five miles inland to a murky swimming pool with floating plastic board game pieces at the top of the stairs. I would not have thought of floodwater as stubborn like a tide pool. Inch by inch, the cyclone fence now stands half submerged, keeping the big fish out. The seawall is ghostly, under soft waves in mid-July sunshine. All those garages off the canals with water spilling to the street. We even forgot it was a flood when the least thing distracted us, when what was on the news and feeds felt more like a flood than the sump pump that failed or the mold that painted the walls like Rorschach blots. What if it just keeps rising, an inch or two at a time until there is no more ice, except for the cubes that fall a lonely dozen chimes in laboring freezers, until the maps won’t work.
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