In 2055 the water will be two feet deeper around Manhattan

by Kate Cavanaugh

Tonight, a woman weeps to her husband and I’m eavesdropping again. Some dispute with her sister over their father’s estate. “It’s what I’m owed,” she says, tears hiting the tamarind rim of her margarita, “for being abused.”

I pay for my tacos. She pays for something she didn’t ask for.

Someone get this woman a new legacy to swim in, one that’s brackish and full of fish shining like micra. One with a hill that slopes down to the open mouth of a stream. Something spacious as a cowboy song—sad like she is and also free.

Here, skyscrapers sit waterlogged with people trying to remember the way a snap pea tendril arches its little back, how a starry smile spreads damp as a halved melon in the sun. Once, sisters told each other secrets as they sucked the juice from lime popsicles. Now all that’s left is a bitten stick and a joke.

What we’re owed, born into—some quick math on a crumpled receipt stained with hot sauce. What a heavy inheritance, to sit across from each other tonight and ask for all the wet world left on the menu.

I just hope her husband takes her somewhere nicer next time.

Kate is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York.