No storm name this time, just sheets of water that found every seam. The power blinked twice and then behaved. Morning brings the inventory: a limb down, fence leaning, street glossy with tannin. My neighbor has a pump set in a blue kiddie pool; he calls it a “temporary solution,” which around here means “permanent until failure.”
At the corner, the city sawhorses block a flooded ditch and a handwritten sign says, kindly, Don’t move these. Someone has already moved one. The bay smells new again—clean on top, sour beneath. People step around the puddles as if the water holds a grudge. It doesn’t. It only follows grade. We’re the ones who remember. I write the day’s entries and leave room at the bottom. The clouds haven’t finished yet. By noon, kids weave bikes through the shallows and a white pickup noses past the sign, reconsiders, and backs out slow, as if retreat were strategy.