After the flood

After the flood, when everything was rearranged, we left things as they were. The cars haphazard in the streets looked much as they always had. Less so the ice-cream van in my garden, which gaped its serving window down into the mud and wouldn't chime no matter what we tried. I planted in the sediment that lay over the Co-op car park, recalling my Year Five topic book on the Nile. Nothing sprouted. That silt was all plastic scraps and spilled petrol and concrete, and the wrong type of shit.