[Header Photo by Wesley Jackson on Unsplash]

we lost everything

every thing
everything that mattered

the dripping faucet
ran the reservoir dry

he told us
talking metaphorically

and then the rains came
and the flooding

we could barely keep
heads above water

he told us
talking literally

the washed away
was gone forever

great ashen heaps
of splintered rot

but the children couldn’t
believe these stories

cracked lips bleeding
wasteland as far as they could see

we lost everything

every thing
everything that mattered

—P.L. Thomas