We live at the edge of a flood plain, on the bank of a creek. In the evening my mother drinks,
falls asleep in the woods under the oak trees. It’s so hard to wake her, to get her home.
Summer rain falls. We leave the house and come back to find water.
The flood surrounds us. We park down the street and walk.
I am ten. At my grandmother’s house, I learn the creek can carry sound.
My grandmother says, I hear you kids and your mother all night, screaming at each other.
I’ve never seen anything like it: The flood lodges a car in the arms of a tree.
I try to imagine how this happened as my mother pours another glass of whiskey.
We walk in the woods and hear a rattlesnake before we see it, thick and coiled beneath a boulder.
My mother says it must’ve washed down from the mountains. It readies its venom.
My mother empties the glass. She picks the lock on the bathroom door with a kitchen knife.
She says she will kill herself. I decide my body can be a barrier between her and death.
The water rises. Red and blue lights flash. The cops knock on the door again.
We’re always so close to drowning.
