Sharks in the Time of Saviors

by Kawai Strong Washburn

and I was actually thankful. But the buyers came. They always find me. At least I still got my flow for that if nothing else. I sold until I shouldn’t. Until the ocean was ashy from the black clouds mobbing down off the Ko‘olaus and a few raindrops slapped my head. I sold until everything was empty. Then I went home. When I got to the front door at our house, I heard the popping rips of meat hitting oil in a pan and from the half-burned golden smell of breadcrumbs frying I figured it was Mom making chicken katsu. I was home later than I should’ve been, so I stood at the door trying for think about my story when Mom just opened the door for me. “I thought that was you,” she said, with her tired smile. I looked over my shoulder. Not like there’s anyone or anything back there at the end of the cul-de-sac, but it gave me a second to think about what to do. “Yeah,” I said. “Long practice today.” “Nainoa told me about the new study group you’re in after school. Must be hard to do that after practice?” It took me a minute to figure out what Noa did for me and then I nodded and said, “Yeah. But I’m doing okay.” “Good,” she said. I took my shoes off, put my ball on the ground. It rolled across the slanted-ass floor, toward the hall to our bedrooms. That bent-ass floor. Our tin roof all shot with rust. Our kitchen counter that’s got all these black and yellow spots from years of smokers and slackers that had the house before us. We were getting ready for eat chicken, from the sale b...

skull along each rung of my spine and throat, into my

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.

And that purpose was so big she didn’t have to understand it to know she had an important part to play. Big destiny is a thing you get drunk on.