Sarah Browning

Flash Floods

I-84, August 18, 2024

That’s Connecticut for you, all extremes—
Greenwich wealth, Bridgeport poverty, desperate 
blinkers on the highway as we slow to 40 then 
25 then 10. My bladder pressing pain as the rain 
pisses down harder and harder, I follow
the Google Lady’s advice, to save nine minutes 
on a smaller highway, perhaps, one that offers 
a gas station, a toilet, sweet relief. But no,
I’m sent along Newtown’s back lanes, down hills
I fear will lead to swollen creeks and bursting bridges,
past Sandy Hook Diner and I should stop but 
those children’s faces pound at my skull and why 
isn’t there a simple gas station where I can empty 
and fill and still the Google Nanny presses me on 
those exurban roads past tucked-away ranch houses—
perhaps the one that sheltered that suffering boy, 
now dead, and his heedless mother, also dead. 
When at last I spot a sign back to I-84 I defy 
the wee woman in the phone, that heedless mother, 
and turn – at least the Interstate will offer flashers, 
higher ground. Oh, Connecticut, my sun roof 
did not leak, I was not swept away by extremity, 
as the news showed the next day two women were. 
By then I was safe, my house on a hill, my body 
sore from gripping the steering wheel. We can’t help
personifying the water, how it raged, how it pissed down,
how furious it was. The Earth is our mother, we say,
exacting her revenge. She’s had just about enough 
of Connecticut’s extremes. She wants those children back.

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