Because her local news was buzzing in the background of the phone call. Because the voices
of the anchors wavered as the tally ticked & skipped from double to triple digits while we swam
against the grief, currents beating us back into the sea. Because she was telling me stories of the folks
she knew up in Appalachia who’d been recording this new history on Facebook, posting videos
of their drives down the mountainsides, bodies stacked in drainage ditches. Because you never forget
the scent of fleshrot & sewage. Because we learned it first inside hospital walls & I crossed an ocean
to leave it behind. Because I pulled up a map of Asheville on Google, the wrinkled folds
of the soft rolls of hills that build & build. Because she said biblical disaster & the line crackled
with lightning. Because the ports closed due to labor strikes, & the grocery stores stayed empty,
food left festering in unpowered fridges. Because toilet paper was & is the first thing to go.
Because I gave up God a long time ago, but responded with apocalyptic anyway, because how else
are we meant to describe the feeling of standing at the door of Noah’s Ark, knowing we’ll be left
because we once knew how to swim. Because the aftermath always begins with first responders.
Because it could have been us, if we were still scrubbing up & strolling in at 6am. Because I can’t
small talk Death again. Can’t watch him drape his limbs over those awful plastic chairs, make
himself comfortable, then ask for ice water like he belongs here. Because this isn’t the first time
we’ve traded stories during disasters. Because we remember the days of the plague, the woman she cared for
whose mother tongue was an endangered language, whose son stayed on the phone to translate,
who was there to hear when his mother’s pupils blew. Because I can picture it, the way she hefted herself
onto the gurney & pressed her palms into the chest, over&over&over. Because the memories brought
our mourning to a pause & I thought maybe the line had gone dead. But I heard the newsmen announce
another cyclone building to the south, & our silence hovered, as if we’d never truly left those walls.
Jordan Cobb (she/her) is a queer American poet. Based in NYC, she completed her MSc in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. Her work has appeared in The Shore, jmww, The Storms Journal, Rise Up Review, Jet Fuel Review, Camas Magazine, Outskirts Literary Journal, & Fugue Journal.