I Am a Homeless Man

I am a homeless man.

Last week I had a two-story home in a city called New Orleans. My wife and I left that home with our toothbrushes and a few shirts on a Thursday, expecting to return in two days. When I left, I did not know of a major hurricane heading for my city. Now it seems I won't be able to see my house again for three or four months.

This is what happened in my city today:

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered with a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "I buried my dog."

In my house on Pine Street, there are some poems I'd like to have back. There are some pictures of my wife and my children I would like to see again. Looters, you are welcome to the tuna, to the television, to the jewelry, even. You are welcome certainly to the peanut butter. There are bottles of water in the laundry room. Please drink. You may find it more comfortable to sleep on the couch downstairs than upstairs in my bed, where surely it is very, very hot. There's been no power for days, no air-conditioning. Late August and early September in New Orleans, after a big storm, is not a place to be.

In the backyard, the key limes are small, but they are ripe. Please help yourself. Their juice is perfect. The Meyer lemons I don't think are quite ready, fat as they are. It's funny what you miss. I miss my lemon tree.

Two days ago, we learned our city was flooding. That night, my wife suddenly woke and remembered that she had taken the old photos and scrapbooks that were kept on the second floor downstairs. We don't know how far above or below sea level our house is, or how many feet of water will come in. After the levees broke, we were trying to understand how high the water would go, but we kept getting confused. Would the water go to the ceiling of the first floor? What happens to a hundred-year-old home that sits in water for days or weeks? We could not do the calculations and kept subtracting when we should add.

My wife and I have been waking up in the middle of the night with thoughts that we've not thought all day. She remembered the piano that I had not thought about. My mother had given it to me before she died, and my brother had helped me move it to Louisiana. I felt a certain wave of sadness, and then it crested and subsided and we let the piano go. We let the pictures of our children go. We let the old books go, and we let the new kitchen go. We let the water cover it all.

I am the looter in my house
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