A Summer Wind — Josh Covington

If I didn't know better, I'd say a bomb went off here. Bits of trash and scraps of wood lay scattered. A remote control from a television long gone lies cast off to the side, now no more than a battered chunk of plastic. A toilet ripped from the floor lies on its end. A mattress sits upended against the lone standing wall. A piece of our neighbor's front porch, twisted and broken, leans against a pile of what is now junk. Nails wrenched from their boards are scattered along the sandy ground like chickenfeed.

“You see that?” my wife asks, pointing.

I look. Our neighbor's home has been pulled from its foundation by the tide, spun, and dropped. It now sits in the gravel road, nearly intact, an incongruous remnant of what was just two days ago.

I lower my head against the wind and begin to sift through the rubble.