Atlas of the Drowned Country

The realtor calls it waterfront.

The water is in the kitchen.

We sleep upstairs. We've always

slept upstairs. The first floor

belongs to the crabs now, the mold

climbing the walls like a child's drawing

of a forest, black and branching.

My daughter keeps a notebook

in a plastic bag under her pillow.

She collects words for things

she'll never see:

Glacier. Coral. Snowman.

Beach. Ski. Basement.

The Hendersons left in June.

The Nguyens in July.

The house across the street

is the bay now. The church

is the bay. The school

where my daughter learned

the names of things

is the gray she watches

from her window.

I found her on the roof last week,

facing east, the sunrise orange

through smoke from somewhere burning.

Always somewhere burning.

What was it like before?

I remember exactly.

That's the problem.

I remember the weight of a summer

that didn't try to kill us.

I remember breathing

without thinking about breathing.

I remember the street.

I remember the church.

I remember her school.

She has none of this.

This is her only world:

the water rising,

the sky the color of rust,

the maps all wrong.

Her face was calm.

Not the calm of acceptance—

she had nothing to accept.

The calm of looking

at the only thing there is.

That night I heard her singing

in her room. A song I didn't recognize.

I stood outside the door

and listened to my daughter singing

and I did not go in

and I did not lie to her

and in the morning

the water had reached the third stair.