Drowning In Suberbia

The land around here looks like it belongs to the side of a lake, it slopes downward gently, suggesting a meeting with water, it front-yard-surfs on grass rippling winds, it slowly sails under the puffy power of clouds. but the water is in our bathtubs and sinks, it is in our plumbing and it gurgles and clanks when its alcohol content runs low. Water is forced uphill by a secret pumping station on the far shore of the State freeway. When it rains we consider this a drowning, none of us will swim, considering swimming a prolongation of our ultimate dark night, besides our above ground pools allow only space for the whelping of baby seals, and we honor that. There is of course, always ice for tinkling glasses. If the rain persists, we are all drowned by evening then we can only roll gently, and dare not trust the floppiness of potted feet, and so we tumble towards an imagined lake one that waits for us at the end of someone else’s drive. However by morns early light we are washed up on this tilting land again and all is as dry as beached fish bones, bones that are known to be reconstituted into pills for the medication of occasional overbrightness.