This year, 2025, at the end of August, is the 20th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. It’s hard for us survivors to believe it has already been that long because we are still affected by it every day. Any survivor of traumatic events knows what anniversaries can do. So please be tender with any K-storm survivors you know, especially this late August and early September.
When dVerse poets announced a coming anthology around Krisis, crossroads, I felt like it was directly in line with my depth theme, and everything I’m exploring about writing deeper this year. When I tried to write to it, I froze and avoided. I don’t like the idea of regrets, or imagining other possible lives. But yesterday’s prompt brought a memory to mind, and today, I couldn’t stop writing. Thank you, Punam of Paeansunplugged.
We Were Before Katrina
This took twice as many years
as it took to build and break
twice as many years more
to stop faking I could take it
But yesterday I remembered
when he turned to me and said
I wish I had never met you
which for me was an end
of a prolonged fantasy
of a prayer for love answered
that I clung to way past its mold
I saw us in the car
he shouldn’t have been driving
taking us home
when I had a place
I wanted to be; a show
I needed to see; and suddenly
the truth was between us
truth we had been dusting
gathered in clinging webs
that would show up
when light hit it
in unexpected corners
near the ceiling
And I was reeling
so I went out
and left him home
I asked a friend for a space
I could sleep alone, and in ‘Ren’s
apartment to myself
I fell on a comfortless couch
If I had gone with him
inside, would we have continued
and found space for those words
to hide? The storm
was still coming
It was always coming.
Experience Writing 
20 years! I can’t believe it’s that long ago, but I guess it really has been. I have just a little baby back then I remember thinking about the mama’s back then and what they would be doing. This year my “baby turns 20… feels still like it was just yesterday. So many of those people and that town will never be the same.
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This is such a strong story which seems almost like a foreboding storm to the storm that came to take away so much… and with time they probably grew into one and the same.
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the storm was always coming. That feels like seeing a truth that is more powerful than the regret?
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Maria, thank you so much for writing this and sharing with us. Why is it we are always preparing/prepared to deal with the storms nature brews but tend to ignore stormy relationships. I love your concluding stanza… timeless questions and statements od facts.
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The pairing of a brewing separation and the arrival of an annihilating storm demonstrates for me that love is a divine thing, passionate and mad and ridiculous and rending, so much so that we only think its little human emotions at play and battle and bed with each other when those things are so deep and old and immense. I’m a Floridian whose been passed by many huge storms — every year we say maybe next year — maybe it’s why I’ve stay married for 29 years. Weathering is part of the annihlation. Well done friend, an artful illustration of the depths we live with.
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A great contemplation of “what if” in the shadow of Katrina coming, Maria…
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