Sharks in the Time of Saviors

by Kawai Strong Washburn

She shrugged. “You hit like a flight attendant,” she said. “I was in tougher scraps at Walmart Black Friday.”

My time as a mother was the same as those last gasping breaths of the owl, and soon enough you’d have to gently set down my love, fold it up into the soil of your childhood, and move beyond.

Ed the courageous one. He took his cue, when the others hunkered together. Came over and sat down at the desk next to me. His weak chin and fruit-punch-red lips. “Kaui,” he said, like it was a word he had practiced in the mirror. He hunched closer and nodded. “I’m not buying Call of Duty, either.” “Oh God, Ed,” I said. “I’m not going to let you touch my vagina.”

He said people think force and power is the same thing, but really force is what you use when you don’t got power.