By Nikoletta Gjoni

I watch a clip of rushing flood waters carrying debris from north to south. Decaying stumps of knocked over trees careening downhill; discarded belongings going under sludges of muddy river; scuffed up used cars floating weightlessly like bottle corks, rust cooking just beneath the surface. They cram under an overpass to form a clot or a makeshift dam and for a minute I think, shit, the water will rise and spill out over the bridge above, perhaps claiming it too. No sooner do I think it when there is the sound of crushing metal. The cars, now toppled over on their sides, waterlogged engines gurgling beneath the surface, are sucked under the bridge and crumple like ornate paper cranes before disappearing out of the camera’s shot. I envy the painlessness of inanimate objects, of how easily nature can manipulate them, strip them of their danger. I envy how sturdy the uprooted tree trunks are before being washed away, not a breath lost to surrender.

I wish it was the same for us, I think later that night, before I turn over in bed and catch the moon hovering in the sky like a spotlight on my hesitations. The salty waters of my body rise towards it and lower again with the sun, and before I doze, I think of how you are the car, and I am sometimes the rushing water; other times I am the debris rolling downhill—both the destroyer and the destroyed.

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Nikoletta Gjoni is a writer living outside of Washington, D.C. Her work has appeared in the 2023 Rising Stars London Independent Story Prize anthology and has been previously nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction. She is currently at work on her first novel. View Gjoni’s publications at www.ngjoni.com or follow her on Twitter @NikiGjoni.