Flowers Called, for Months No Answer

Mariana Ortega, Killing Bird. Acrylic and mixed media.

The birds left. Come spring, they did not return. Neither did the children. The city became a museum of itself. A place without song, where people spoke of people who’d lived in lots where tall weeds now sway, and signs on posts advertised men that mow, only there weren’t lawns, just brambles that hid steps that led to nowhere. Masks that separated lungs from spores. Where there were doors, there were numbers. Some meant people, some meant pets. The word “dynasty” was painted on a chunk of sidewalk, splattered in white letters as though a teen had coaxed a pigeon off the street, picked it up, and squeezed. We’d forgotten back then that to name a thing is to conjure its fury, that to conjure fury is to ensure its demise. Here, in America, it’s our custom to name storms. We named ten. The eleventh we named Katrina. New steps, called monuments, have been built throughout the city. Some, where no houses stood. People climb them. They take photographs. I was on spring break. I wore a red dress.