4,645

Eight months after Hurricane Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico, devastating the island and many residents in remote areas are still without basic utilities, the official government tally of fatalities has stood at sixty-four.
An impromptu memorial two weeks ago (and we’re all ashamed for having overlooked such a powerful and important gesture, which illustrates how beastly and uncaring and so easily called away we can be) on the marble courtyard of the San Juan capitol grew into thousands of pairs of empty shoes being neatly lined up to represent a truer number of the number lost in the storm.