Colby McAdams

860-917-0669

What’s a text back in a tsunami?
(The plane is full of gold bars and it is too heavy with all its worth so it is GOING DOWN in a shallow reef, leaving behind much treasure for future generations.)
Let me put it this way, there wasn’t a plane. There was only a car. 
 
The family car is flooding and someone remembers a video on how to punch out the window
The first step to escaping a flooding car is to stay as calm as possible. The second step is to get out in the first 30 to 120 seconds. These are the only steps. 
Someone tries to punch out a window, and it works like in a movie, and they will die a hero as the submerged car is sinking the submerged car that took them to once important now arbitrary places 

Does it ring six or seven times before going to voicemail?

This family they don’t know, none of them, how to swim so they drown anyways. That’s what that phone call felt like.

I waved a white flag but there was so much blood it just looked red. You waved back across the battlefield. It’s stupid that waving can mean hello or goodbye and I am too stupid to know the difference. It’s stupid that the battlefield was the Atlantic Ocean. That’s what the day after that phone call felt like.

The ocean is just a tsunami and you’re a coward for refusing to accept that

If you were stranded on a deserted island you would ask for a machete because love is impractical and I have my career here. Sacrifices scare you so I offer to go to the island. 

From the top of the mountain I light a fire. 
I hold my hands over my head. 
I wave at a plane in the distance. 
It crashes into the ocean. This is what the rest of my life feels like, I think.


Colby McAdams is a writer from Connecticut with a bachelor's in English from UConn and is in the process of earning her Master's in Professional Writing from NYU. Her poetry has been featured in Potluck Mag, SeaFoam Mag, and Long River Review. Colby's hobbies include dominating the aux cord at parties and inviting her demons to dinner with a bottle of wine. You can find her on Twitter @Coco_erin.