It was a Halloween night unlike any other I’d ever seen.
First time stepping out of the house in days
since the hurricane first hit.
The electricity was back,
keeping the rooms lit up and the dairy goods cold,
and water was running hot
from the faucets.
Then I ventured out.
I’d seen images of the wreckage
and devastation of the city I’d known all my life
on TV news channels,
SI Live, the NY Times
but nothing prepared me
for the splintered telephone poles and dead stoplights;
traffic squirming around
in onfusion, two lanes becoming three, then four.
Toppled trees created
tents in the sidewalks
and exposing their undersides of entangled roots.
Homes by the ocean flung their garage doors wide open
and the driveways piled up with the furniture and
home appliances stained with floodwater;the roads dusted
with orange-brown residue,
everywhere, the creased brows of those who returned
to restore their homes and hang their clothes out to dry.
It was a Halloween night
I’d never seen before,
when death tolls were silently rising, one by one
while young children in their glittery costumes
trick-or-treated and teenage boys tossed a football into the air
and ran out to the middle of the road to catch it.
To think, that the floodwaters could have risen over any one of us
during the storm that darkened
the city skyline.