Providence

What's left is footage: the hours before Camille, 1969—hurricane parties, palm trees leaning in the wind, fronds blown back, a woman's hair. Then after: the vacant lots, boats washed ashore, a swamp where graves had been. I recall how we huddled all night in our small house, moving between rooms, emptying pots filled with rain. The next day, our house on its cinderblocks—seemed to float in the flooded yard: no foundation beneath us, nothing I could see tying us to the land. In the water, our reflection trembled, disappeared when I bent to touch it.