#manywhere

That first night, in their FEMA trailers, they slept on thin cots with metal frames. They dreamed of riding mowers clipping blankets of zoysia. They dreamed of the cremated body they’d left on the island, dreamed a strong, nowhere wind that tore the roof from their house and slurped the ashes up into the sky. They dreamed of Lena’s severed legs dancing salsa in black hose with terrible runs. They dreamed the storm followed them here, and the trailer floated off on the waves, and they heard their oldest daughter gasping for breath, choking as the waves curled over her head, and they sat up, still half asleep, slapping the wall where the light switch would have been if this was really their wall, their house. Their daughter sobbed in the next cot. They lay back again on their cot, which others had used before them, which smelled like the untold tragedies of other people. They turned their back. I’m trying to sleep. That first night, they drank. They smudged with sage. They fisted, fucked just for the familiarity of it. They woke every fifteen minutes to spin the handle on the crank lantern, so it wouldn’t dim and die. They lit three candles to the Virgin, the Mother, and the Beloved, asked for a blessing on this new land. They slept alone for the first time in decades, better than ever before. That first night, they woke up at four in the morning and walked out into the yard, where they saw us move through our lit bedrooms—most of us sleep fitfully, if at all—and they wondered what we were doing and if we were watching them.