Beneath a paper ceiling, the basement sinks,
still hidden from view, into the promise
of a warm salt solution meant to rush quietly
from the left. My mother, clothespin happy,
is horizon-bent now and flowing sideways
through the streamlined contours of a perennial
field—photo books spread wide as the hands
of God across the floor. Her mouth redrawn
to a gasp directed at Mary Magdalene, a Lenscrafters advertisement
pasted to cardboard. My mother now cannot save
the photos sewn into a quilt of sea. Nobody can be brave
amidst a flood like this. Almost sisters, we always knew
each back road: the quiet stir of the kitchen at night, crying
with the water turned on. This is a different sort of flood now,
though I can't discern what kind.