Sharks in the Time of Saviors

by Kawai Strong Washburn

But that’s the problem with the present, it’s never the thing you’re holding, only the thing you’re watching, later, from a distance so great the memory might as well be a spill of stars outside a window at twilight.

If a god is a thing that has absolute power over us, then in this

world there are many. There are gods that we choose and gods that we can’t avoid; there are gods that we pray to and gods that prey on us; there are dreams that become gods and pasts that become gods and nightmares that do, as well. As I age I learn that there are more gods than I’ll ever know, and yet I have to watch for all of them, or else they can use me or I can lose them without even realizing it.

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

Whatever part of me flowed into you from my body, it turned us tight into two people that shared a soul. I believe that of all my children. Fathers will never understand the way you get deep in us, so deep that there’s a part of me that remains, always, a part of you, no matter where you go.

If someone were to ask me what money means this would be what I would say: The world feels like it will stay under you no matter what you do.

“If the one thing you are gets taken,” I say—I’m not even really thinking when I talk, the words is just coming through me like they was always there—“if the one thing you are, the part you always figured would be your best, if that gets taken away, the next day…” I shrug. “The next day it’s like you’re carrying around your whole future like a dead body on your back. Right in that place on your neck, between your shoulders. Hard for anything to feel right, when you’re like that.

“Whenever I’ve made a choice in my life, a real choice…” She leans back from my head. Touches my shoulder just for a second. “I can always feel the change, after I choose. The better versions of myself, moving just out of reach.”