The sand sloshes
beneath his boots,
lacking the satisfying crunch
of childhood memory,
a youth shaped
by churning tides
demarking a terrain
too bitterly humid
for daytime habitation.
As the town grew
increasingly nocturnal,
his parents ventured out only in the evening,
prowling sidewalks
like alley cats
in search of scraps,
since the sea’s bounty
had long been depleted
by the tentacles of
more privileged parties.
He had spent his whole life
in perpetual retreat from the encroaching waters,
swelling puddles into ponds
which, overflowing, created rivers
where once ran Main Street.
Ever more violent storms ravaged the landscape
battering natural formations
familiar to generations,
but, now
crumbling before his eyes and
blotting out the memory of when
these monuments towered majestically
as reminders of higher aspirations,
instead of symbols for indifference.
“Perhaps, instead of boundary fences,
they should’ve built flood walls,”
he mutters
as he trudges through
the swamp of Monument Valley.
This was originally published in Fall 2017 edition of The Helix.
