Flood Fear

One o’clock in the morning.
My heartbeat has changed to a rhythm of drums,
rock-steady, rapid beats hollowing through the chambers.
The river freightens me.
Too close.
100 yards next to me the Queen of Danube is looking at me.
She is gathering water from everywhere.
Its tributaries are feeding it, the rain is feeding it.
Everything adds to the torrential ride.

I can only sit and wait.
My beloved ones are asleep in a safer place.
I am here – and wait.
The town seems asleep, but I can’t believe it.
But people probably do. Others.
I don’t.
I can’t.
I am afraid.

You can’t fight a river. You can just run.
Or you wait.
Paralyzed until somebody rings the alarm bell.
The rooms are half-empty.
I spent the last hours moving most of it to the upper floor.
Some of it.
Toys, books, appliances, rugs. Whatever.
I really do not know what to save.
My hands work on their own.
I just wait.

Water is dripping from the ceiling in the bedroom upstairs.
The chimney runs by the room, is leaking, exhales a trail of water.
I had to open a long-sealed hatch
To crawl
Into a dirty attic.
A bare space right underneath the wings of the roof.
No light, just two candles, flickering.
The wind is howling, bashing against the roof,
the rain is hammering a rhythm , a hymn for the water.
It was just past midnight.
Never explore an empty attic in the night before a flood.
It is devastating.

Almost two o’clock now.
Sleep is creeping into my very bones,
but I fight it.
I can’t sleep.
I would not know what world I would wake into.
Not that I would know if I stay awake.
But it feels better, by a mere fragrance.

The night is still peaking.
Pitch dark.
The day, now lost, did nothing but announce the night to follow.
To announce the dark and the water.
The night I am sitting in right now.
Sitting and waiting.
Thinking about my beloved ones.
Seeing them dream and sleep their uneasy sleep.
Sitting and waiting.
Waiting for the rain to stop.
Waiting for the flood to arrive.

Need to check the dripping ceiling.
Might have to crawl into the attic again.
Another darkness right inside my house.

If forecasts hold
Then it is a mere 18 hours
Or so
When the worst should be over.

I might be able to sleep then.
When the flood fear has released me.