Day 1,133

We are outside the realm of time.
Outside the realm of humanity.
A friend writes to you
from her flooded tent.
The sound of the sea, the pounding
of the rain. Everything soaked.
Everything cold and drowning.
Her children’s clothes. Her
children’s bedding. Mattresses,
blankets. The few toys
they’d preserved from displacement
to displacement. She attempts
to dry things in the hours
between storms; but
it’s futile, the storms
only come again. Outside
the realm of humanity,
she writes. Soon
her phone will lose
its charge; are these
the last words
she’ll write? Outside
the realm where anything
can reach in and help.
Standing there
in the pouring rain
with her small shivering children,
on the edge of everything
forgotten.