by Cameron Mays

                  (Plain Press June 2025) Well, it’s finally here. The day you’ve been dreading. You were warned for years, and even though you believed it true, part of you hoped it was an anxious myth. All those efforts to slow it down, the electric car, the raised foundation, the meatless Mondays. All those ways to cool down, the air conditioners, the heat pumps, the evaporative coolers. Nothing stopped it.

                  The heat’s too hot, the seawater’s too high, the reservoir’s too low. That old Carolina home and that beautiful Brooklyn brownstone, the Arizona golf course, and the California almond farm, all stuck in the swamp, seized by the ocean, caked in dusty dirt, and fallowed by Mother Nature made wicked by man.

HUMOR

                  Great grandpa left Oklahoma because of the Dust Bowl. You’re leaving for a water bowl, five big ones by the name of Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario. The jokes flash through your head. You’d never live in a flyover state, you’d jape. Probably wishing they were low-carbon-emitting-mass-rail-pass-through states now as you strap the last of your belongings atop your crossover. But where are you going to live?

                  Canada is off the table. That’s a logistical headache. Besides, you’ve never been one for hockey. Minnesota is practically Canada, same with the upper peninsula. You need a big city, sorry Sheboygan! Pride is your detriment, too much for Detroit and too little for Chicago. There’s Buffalo, but that’s New York taxes without New York City ketamine.

                  You need a middle road. Neither great nor horrible. Somewhere with blue moons and red mornings. Not a fixer-upper, but not exactly move-in ready. A paint-by-numbers town, where the skillet’s good but needs a little grease. You need somewhere that would be happy just to have you. You need Cleveland.

                  They call Ohio the heart of it all. They ought to call Cleveland the start of it all. It being the climate crisis, which has displaced you and millions of others. Yes, it was John Rockefeller, our most famous son, that commodified oil. And although you won’t see the site of his first refinery or his Euclid Avenue mansion, two casualties of progress, he left behind a wonderful little obelisk atop a nice little hill.

                  It’s a perfectly reasonable obelisk. It wouldn’t win any awards at an obelisk convention, but it’s still damn good. It juts rather handsomely off its hill. You’re going to be thrilled to walk past on it on your Sunday afternoon strolls. It’s an obelisk you won’t forget, especially since it’s not in the floodplain of rising seawater.

                  Or consider the Cuyahoga River, another area of perfect reasonability in a perfectly reasonable town like Cleveland. They call it the Burning River; get used to seeing that moniker around. Don’t worry, though. It’s not on fire anymore. In fact, it’s rather clean. Feel free to kayak on it; global weather fluctuations permitting. The river kickstarted the American environmental movement. Just not with enough momentum to keep you living where you want to live. Now, you’re here.

                  You’re coming for Lake Erie. It isn’t the deepest Great Lake, or the coldest, or cleanest, or most scenic. It is, however, one of them. It gets algal blooms, bad ones. Don’t judge a book by its cover. That isn’t because the lake is dirty. That’s because our farms are mostly unregulated in the amount of nitrogen fertilizer they use. Think of it as a glass half full situation, or lake half full, if you will. One man’s algal bloom is another man’s dystopic food source.

                  Water is cheap here. Everything is. We still got vending machines selling cans of Pepsi for fifty cents. Think you’re going to find that in Chicago? Fat chance! We don’t have all the big city amenities, but enough of the good ones. We don’t need everything because we’ve got heart. Heart doctors — the best in the world over at the Cleveland Clinic. You might need them after the post-evacuation stress.

                  Here’s something sweet to lighten the load, our special moving offer. BYOT or Bring Your Own Team. Buy a house in Cleveland and we will relocate your respective sports franchise here at taxpayers’ expense. We’ll move anything. Team names, logos, players, even the stadium! We can probably squeeze it somewhere off Opportunity Corridor. That’s the opportunity we’ve been hoping for, anyways.

                  We got a special offer for renters, too. Anyone signing a lease with a valid Sun Belt photo ID will be entered in a raffle to win a “Welcome to Cleveland” gift basket. Contents will make you the envy of your building. A collectable Christmas Story leg lamp beach towel perfect for a holiday pool party, an old washing machine to save you a few quarters, and a copy of our latest informational pamphlet, “From Deprecating to Self-Deprecating: Coping Mechanisms for New Clevelanders”.

                  From the bottom of our hearts at the Climate Crisis Relocation Services Bureau of Cleveland, or C.C.R.S.B.C. for short, we want to thank you for considering Cleveland. As you begin this exciting stage in your life as a climate refugee, we aim to make your Cleveland transition as seamless as possible. From our vague suburban-Polish aesthetics to our vague suburban-Polish cuisines, this is Cleveland. Our climate change bubble is your new home.