Sharks in the Time of Saviors

by Kawai Strong Washburn

generations, a god whose fingers were shaped like rifles and whose voice sounded like treaties waiting to be broken. And money was the name of that god, and it was the sort of god that preyed on you, made demands and laid its hands on you with such force as to make the Old Testament piss its pants. We were made, eventually, to pray to it, whether we wanted to or not. Your father and I still pray to it now.

call again to talk. It’s gotten harder with my family now. Each of us with our own language of death and grieving and no avenue for translation.

this is so true within families, we all go through grief differently

so far away from where everyone else walks. “Part of me gonna stay down in the valley like that forever. Just chasing him. Part of me ain’t never coming back up. You know?”