Sharks in the Time of Saviors

by Kawai Strong Washburn

It became like a prayer at our house, Our Father who art in debt collection, hallowed be thy pay.

But Noa was gone by then, anyway, or at least it felt like that when he’d talk. Like he was back out in the ocean among the sharks, bobbing alone. I could see him there, the waves and tides and gods dragging him around. But I’m in the water, too, I wanted to say. And there are plenty eyes on you. No one’s watching to see if I stay afloat.

How many nights did we make like that? How long was I stupid enough to believe we were indestructible? 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.

The whole world was there, in your face, beaming out of your perfect brown skin. Everything was made new, over and over. It shook me with something so holy and complete I didn’t need a prayer to know there were gods with us, in us.

If she doesn’t beg, exactly, there’s still a quiet resignation to the mother. There’s still a kneeling, and opening of the palms upward, asking for something to be placed in them. Hands that used to push and take and grip their own way through the world. Picture what we’ve become without you, my son. Can you see it?

Because our eyes filled with a wet history, and we knew there wouldn’t be another visitor until his release, if then. Because another punch of poverty, no way to make bail, seeing what we can’t do as a family, again and again and again.