Resemblance

Each square box and awkward triangle can be any home they may have known.

When a little artist girl—too young for school, but old enough to know what forms danger— displays the picture she has drawn on CNN, I think of Rashad, my godson, three years old and fascinated with inking out the world.

Her houses could be his houses; some of her shapes are toppled, all are scribbled over in blue. That's the water she says, too loudly, leaning into a reporter's microphone.

The next day I watch the news as Rashad leans on my living room table, a crayon and notepad in his hands. Stories flood the screen.

A child is searching the Dome for parents, a parcel of others follow him; a host of eyes rove up and down each dim row. Katrina is his mother's name,

but no one believes the little saint-boy harboring nine children, all younger than him and parentless, too. Adults think he is mistaken or making fun.

But once you learn to shelter lost children in an attic, calm them until the wind dies, dole out the candy in your pockets and search empty houses for milk, you are no longer a child. You don't make fun anymore.

When Rashad glances at the screen, the camera is panning what was a neighborhood, he says, Water, Aunty Mica, water everywhere.

For a newsreel moment, he is the young Picasso.