My childhood home sat at the bottom of a hill

 so each time the sky would open to rain, these products managed to find their way

into our basement. When this first happened, I thought the world was ending, though

perhaps that  was just my mother crying, for I had never witnessed her until that moment. I

remember now how her tears fell to the ground with her, seeping between gaps in the floor to join

what was below.She looked so small then, curled beneath my baby pictures on the wall. The storm must

have made its way up the basement stairs because my father too was a gust in that moment, moving frantically

toward the depths of our house in futile, impassioned motions. As if there was something left to fix.

As if a man could keep at bay an act of God.

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 In time we learned to just let it happen. The rain would rush toward us and so too did my brothers and I rush

toward the threshold of this new world. Listening for the sounds of its conception. Afraid of viewing that which was

hidden there.Laying in wait for curiosity to overcome fear and when it did - as curiosity often does - we would venture down holding small palms together in chains to stand on the last step that resisted being submerged. Here, finally, we could accompany the edges of this world as it lapped against our residence. What a strange pool party​.​

I couldn’t stop asking, Who should we invite? 

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Though I never sent out invitations, plenty came to bathe there, crawling from corners and delusions and rifts in time. They swam where we were not allowed, for you see, this was no longer our home - not past those stairs. Now we

were just spectators - tender objects alive in their space. From our stoop, we would wait and observe

what creatures came to move in odd circles, disturb the black water, and wade in ripples of themselves

while our pajamas stole what hung in the air for us to take back to bed and dream of. 

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Days would pass before the rain would cease and our world could return

- a gradual osmosis through old walls - leaving nothing but the faint memories of

wet earth and brick and mold and longing.