After the Flood
- After the Flood
After the flood we piled our memories at the curb and moved to a town where the locals said it only rained on Mondays. For years it was true.
We got jobs with free parking and pension plans.
We bought a house with a view of the river and took deviled eggs to neighborhood potlucks.
We joined the club and had sex at midnight in a sand trap off the eighteenth green.
We watched British detective shows and drank craft beer from bottles.
We had children who grew up and left us.
We traveled the world and slept in on Sundays.
We kept our memories in our heads, until they were gone.
When rain fell for days we watched the river rise, with nothing to lose. [End Page 49]
Scott Ragland has an MFA in creative writing (fiction) from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Before taking a writing hiatus, he had several stories published, most notably in Writers’ Forum, Beloit Fiction Journal, and The Quarterly. More recently, his work has appeared in apt, The Conium Review, Ambit, The Common, Fiction International, Cherry Tree, CutBank, and Zizzle Literary, among others.
