"Writing from the Hillcrest Courtyard"

Graduate student Marta Holliday and other residents of Hawkeye Court apartments evacuated as the flood loomed. She wrote the following poem from her temporary home at Hillcrest Residence Hall:

Writing in the Hillcrest Courtyard
I come, prepared with my notebooks,
To the stone bench post thunderstorm
To write a story like I have been meaning to remember it.
And I take it in—
How normal we are.
We.
Who come into unexpectedness 48 hours ago,
Running between the U Hauls and the emptying apartments.
We.
Who salvage our food and baby formula,
Our photographs and our king mattresses,
To be transformed into an unlikely collaboration
Amid lofted beds and community showers.
I marvel—
Tonight, parents walk their kids outside to play and scream. While grandmothers
In saris stroll.
We do laundry or read. We eat chocolate cookie Twix
As we curl on the obtuse angle lounge chairs.
And walk unashamed—
In robes to the bathrooms.
I am surprised at the handshakes of faces I never stopped
To recognize before, in the normative isolation of the one bedroom apartment.
The commiserated smiles and first names exchanged.
I recognize faces from the bus during the school year, who tonight
Eat cafeteria macaroni and cheese,
And all the while we marvel at
How perversely beautiful the river seems right now,
Even as it erodes trees,
And lakes metastazsize
Where the English parking lot should be.
It is a surreal weekend of camping, and making friends
While outside rainbows burst from the thunderstorms.