/
Morning seems like night.
How long has it been raining?
I walk down the stairs
to find an unwelcomed guest:
a pool of muddied
water, claiming the living
room. As I wade to
the front door, the lukewarm pool
soaks my pants, thighs and
underwear. Mud splashes my
t-shirt. I open
the door—a current of leaves,
sticks, and plastic bags
swarms inside. Outside, all I
can glimpse is water.
My scooter stands stupidly
by the metal fence,
rendered useless. The driveway,
the street, the garden—
they’re the same now. Just like that,
society ceases
its operations. I try
to call my parents
but there’s no service. Power
has always been first
to go out, electrical
current releasing
everywhere. Go to higher
ground and find others,
I think. Find dryness amid
this city of flood.
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Even if this would all go away, will the water forget what we have done, what we continue to do? 1 Every year, the rain, the tide, the flood. Yet, when it is dry, we refuse to believe in the prophecy, the prophecy that is a warning, a cycle. Someday, the whole ocean will empty itself and we must receive.
I try to wade across the city, to my family. Each step takes a full motion from my body. The closer to the center, the deeper the water. It’s up to my elbows now. Someone in a raincoat is sharing their bread with the group. Another one is passing bottled water. Children laugh as they wrestle each other in the water. A truck speeds through, splashing everyone.
Lifeboats in the distance. I greet the volunteers. An elder with no teeth smiles at me. I nod my head slightly. The boat takes me to the nearest shelter. I remember I haven’t eaten since last night. Inside the church at Jalan Kayu Putih, I see people sitting and sleeping on floor mats. I look for a familiar face and find no one. A church member arrives with rice boxes. I help her distribute them among the evacuees. I take my portion, sit in the corner. I pray for the rain to stop.
\
Where there is life, there is a cycle.
We exist in this sequence,
both as disruptor and disrupted,
always in need of saving
and forsaking. There is time to wear
boots and time to run barefoot.
There is a time to repaint the walls
and time to leave the walls be.
There is time to break bread and pass it
around, and a time to fast.
There is a time to cry with the clouds,
and time to sing with the birds.
A time to curse, a time to forgive.
A time to love, and a time
to let go. Time to say everything
and a time to stay silent.
Now is the time for the storm to run its course.
- Adapted from Natalie Diaz’s “The First Water Is the Body.”
Contributor’s Bio
Jeddie Sophronius (he/him) is a Chinese-Indonesian writer from Jakarta. He is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Virginia and the poetry editor at Meridian. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. He spends his pastime getting defeated in chess.
