“Jen Wave” by WITS Student Markarius Paine
October 14, 2022
It was a cold and wet evening on January 5 just outside of downtown Seattle. There was an amazing baby being born on South Main Street in a small brick apartment building.
In unit number 5, there was a small cry and a curious meow and at 5:47 that evening, Jen Aronian Wave was born.
As a kid, Jen always thought that if he tried hard enough, he could do anything. The thought of doing anything really boosted Jen’s mind to try hard.
When Jen was 4, he could do a perfect butterfly stroke, and by the age of 6, Jen could fix his apartment’s plumbing in 5 minutes. And by the way, Jen could drink a ton of water, so much that when he coughed in his community garden, he watered all the plants in the place.
Jen always wore his blue tunic with a perfect star in the middle that he had drawn himself because stars and blue were his two favorite things.
One day when Jen was twelve, he was reading a book on arctic penguins when he heard a knock on his door. He got up to see who it was, and it happened to be Brad, the guy who was always at the front desk of the pool Jen went to.
When Jen opened the door, Brad came in.
“Very cozy in here,” he said in a gruff, but gentle voice. “But rather on the small side,” he added.
“It is the perfect place to come home to after all the day’s work,” Jen replied.
“Yeah. I guess I see what you mean,” Brad said. “Anyway, I came to give you your swim trunks. You left them at the pool last time you came.”
As Brad was handing Jen his swim trunks, there was a terrible splash that made the sun crackle and pop and say, “How dare you mess with me! I was sleeping, you know!”
“What was that?” Jen asked.
“Don’t know, but it sounded like there was a huge wave that hit land or something,” Brad said.
Jen went outside to find that water was foaming directly outside his apartment.
“No wonder people call it Seattle. It’s literally a sea of water!” said a shocked Jen.
“Oh no!” cried Brad as he came up behind Jen. “What are we going to do?”
“Wait, give me a moment to think,” said Jen
Jen knew he could drink a lot of water, like a lot a lot of water. The average that Jen could drink was 12 tons, but he did not think that he could drink all the water that had flooded Seattle.
Jen thought and thought for several minutes before finally coming up with an idea.
“I know what to do!” Jen said triumphantly.
“I am going to go to the Colombia tower to drink all the water!”
“But you can’t do that.” Said Brad, now sounding worried.
“Course I can!” said Jen, and with that he started to swim to the Columbia Tower.
When he got there, he franticly ran up the stairs, to be exact it took Jen 47 seconds to get to the top, and when he did, he took a good look around himself.
“Wow,” exclaimed Jen. “I have never seen a view like this!”
Jen needed to get back on track. Jen’s plan was to drink all the water by jumping off the side of the building. It was dangerous, but Jen was not scared. Jen started taking big breaths in and big breaths out, until he took one big breath and jumped clear of the side of the building and with one big gulp, Jen swallowed all that handy dandy water.
Jen landed softly and quietly on the pavement next to the tower. Jen thought about what to do with all the water he had just inhaled, and after a little bit of thinking he decided to put the water back into the Puget sound and make water sea level.
Jen jogged to the docks and dove into the water, then he opened his mouth and released the water back into the Puget Sound.
Jen then climbed up the dock ladder and walked back home to curl up in his favorite armchair and think about his day’s worth of work.
Markarius Paine wrote this poem while a student at TOPS K-8 School with WITS Writer-in-Residence Karen Finneyfrock. Markarius read this poem to open our Sasha LaPointe Presents event with Julian Aguon on October 19, 2022.