Shaken from intercontinental slumber, the body does not know arrival until first rain: crashing onto awnings, wetness pouring off curlicued edges; met with sprints for shelter or vegetal indifference, grass being grass whether submerged or dry; slaps of flip-flops running flat droplets all the way home. The body remembers a time: faint memory of an old Toyota drawn through a flood, the insistent timing belt of an engine in low gear, tentatively feeling its way across the water. Another body. A grandfather, his hands fiercely on the wheel; grandson who commits the tension to memory. Years later, impervious surfaces alter the flow of an island hydrology. Storm drains built to direct water; a reservoir that initially fails, then succeeds at detaining runoff.
//
nor’easter streams—tradeswilted blows of plastic—cross
my path—reminding—
Shou Jie Eng is a writer and architectural designer. Originally from Singapore, he runs Left Field Projects, a multi-disciplinary design practice located in Hartford, Connecticut. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Bennington Review, Harvard Review, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. His chapbook, We Carry These Bones to Market, was a finalist for the 2024 Helena Whitehill Book Award by Tupelo Press, and he teaches architectural drawing at the Rhode Island School of Design.