Future Tense: Water Rights
Her mother's water rights were worth more than the house and the land combined. The aquifer has maybe fifteen years of irrigation left. Her nephew wants to keep farming. Selling requires two signatures and a stack of forms. Not selling requires nothing at all.
Future Tense: Water Rights
Her mother's water rights were worth more than the house and the land combined. The aquifer has maybe fifteen years of irrigation left. Her nephew wants to keep farming. Selling requires two signatures and a stack of forms. Not selling requires nothing at all.
Thaw Season
They left Houston after the flood and drove north to Duluth for Lake Superior, the cooler summers, the freshwater. Three years later, their basement wall is weeping groundwater through a crack the frost heave opened. The sump pump cycles on and off all day. The lead pipe replacement is scheduled for 2034. The neighbor's drainage runs toward their foundation. The rain falls on frozen ground that won't absorb it. A short story about the water you moved toward arriving through every wrong seam.
Thaw Season
They left Houston after the flood and drove north to Duluth for Lake Superior, the cooler summers, the freshwater. Three years later, their basement wall is weeping groundwater through a crack the frost heave opened. The sump pump cycles on and off all day. The lead pipe replacement is scheduled for 2034. The neighbor's drainage runs toward their foundation. The rain falls on frozen ground that won't absorb it. A short story about the water you moved toward arriving through every wrong seam.
The Incomplete Essay
The water from our tap hurts your teeth in summer. Mom says it comes straight from the lake. It tastes like nothing, which is how water should taste, but most water doesn't.
In November the lake goes this heavy gray. The waves get taller than our garage. You can hear them from school.
Our sump pump turns on and off at night. It sounds like the house breathing. Dad checks it when it stops because stopping is the bad part. It runs way more now than when we first moved here.
I was supposed to use the packet.
Water, Contested
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