Antediluvian

By Ashely Adams

Hurricane Irma will make landfall tomorrow and I don’t know what else to do but go to the beach. The park I go to is not the iconic sugar sand beach of tourism ads, but it’s the closest to my apartment and I don’t feel like sitting in a pretty spot anyway. The park lies not on the Gulf, but Tampa Bay, shielded from the full force of the ocean, a resting place for vegetation, concrete, and the smell of gentle decay that permeates so much of the state.

I wade in. I’ve always had compulsion to submerse myself, even when the ocean does nothing to welcome me. The water is the color and temperature of microwaved chicken broth. I lay back, the softness of my body holding me on the surface of the water. The waves are slowly building, stirred up by the first gusts of the looming storm. I’ve never seen it so windy here before.

On the other side of the bay, the windows of buildings sparkle with late-day sunlight. The city’s full of naked glass, the hardware shops long-emptied of plywood. Another arrogance, another poor-planning, just like the condos and stores crowded around the water’s edge. The buildings tangle, ocean-starved, as if they were wild-grown mangroves and not things of metal and wire. Nobody here seems to think of melting glaciers or the way this land crawls and sinks back into its ancient truth. I wonder what will be left by tomorrow’s end, what happens when a creeping deluge meets the rabid foam of a hurricane.

Above my head, planes hiss and roar their departure, full of people heading somewhere safe. I watch them leave, the sea pulsing in my ears, and try to imagine what it feels like to flee.

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About Ashely Adams

Adams is a queer, swamp-adjacent writer whose work has appeared in Paper Darts, Fourth River, Permafrost, Apex Magazine, and other places. She is the nonfiction and hybrids editor of the literary journal Lammergeier. You can find Ashley on twitter with the handle @goosegloriosa.