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The vanishing is supposed to unfold steadily but instead it happens all at once—
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My mother says: We are not leaving. This is our home.
The morning of the hurricane, far from New Orleans, my daughter sits at the kitchen table with crayons: I'm drawing weather.
The morning of the hurricane, the sky in New York is a glare of bright, bright blue. The 9/11 sky.
The morning of the hurricane in our last phone call, when I have given up yelling, begging, pleading with my parents to go, I tell my mother: Take the photo albums and leave them on a high shelf in the safest closet. One for me, Alissa and Josh, of our childhoods. To my father I ask: Do you have your poems?
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Supply List for my Brother on the Day of Reentry
A backpack if you have to walk to find them
Gas—full tank and safe closed containers to fill up