amoureaux -

So, it snowed this year in New Orleans. It was pretty but as I watched it fall, I couldn’t help but think of when it snowed December 25th, 2004 as I watched through the blinds of my window in my room. All of my friends wanted me to come outside but it didn’t feel right. Something felt wrong about it, like calm before the storm, if you’ve ever witnessed that. Eight months later, Katrina hit. So when I looked out of the blind of the window in my room this year, I assume it’s just a freight train coming my way. I looked at the marker at the top of my ceiling that marks the highest the flood water got and I figure, well fuck. There ain’t no attic in this muthafucka so I don’t know how in the world I’d get on the roof, not to mention the roof is high as all hell and on a slope.

Here’s where you’ll call me stupid but I guess I’ll have to figure out a survival plan because I am not leaving again(not like I got far last time, fuck you, Texas). This is what you people don’t understand because you haven’t been through it. When you build a life, when a certain area is your life and all you know, when it’s your culture going down under 20 feet of water, there’s no worse feeling. When you know there’s people you’re close to possibly dead or half-way there from drowning, the only thing you want to do is go back. When I left last time, I got fucking stuck in Virginia. I hate Virginia with a burning passion. I hate when people ask me if I eat alligator and mock my accent. And I was sick and tired of people asking me if my house got fucked up, cause obviously if it didn’t, I wouldn’t be in bumfuck, VA in the first place. I was stuck there for two years. That entire two years, do you know what the only thing that made me mildly happy was? The idea of being back home. No Saints jersey, no fleur de lis tattoo, no gold and black outfits could replace what wasn’t there for me. I could not walk outside and smell salt water and fried food. There was no cajun except the lifeless ones like me who were “refugees.” And I don’t want to be that far away from home ever again in my life because I didn’t feel like myself. I get really pissed off at this city, with the corrupt cops and the fucked up school systems and no job opportunities but… I still can’t help but love it. If it was that bad, I wouldn’t have come back. But this is home to me, this is where I’m comfortable and where I know I fit in. This city is not just a city to me like it is to you. I love it like it’s a mother to me. Crazy as that may sound, it’s the truth, and I don’t expect anyone to understand but someone else from here. And I can’t do another Katrina.