Post —

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          The end is not near. We’ve passed the end, & it’s so far back it’s like …

the moment I hid my brother’s porn

in my dresser’s bottom drawer,

blushed into a woman’s body

so much property to plot & lease,

the millionth crack of rebellion my skin enacted,

the 1,198th Waffle House forgotten,

mile marker zero submerged beneath

the seventh sea, the first time

I said fuck it & realized I’d been surrendering

since the womb. That moment

you can’t quite remember:

when the night began to treat you gently,

softened the mistakes of your hands

& the thistles of absence,

when we thought separate could ever be

equal, between changing hate speech

when we added post- to everything:

post-racism, post-multiculturalism, post-

haste. When we learned

what is by learning what isn’t, what’s alike

by what’s different. The moment I hid that nude

woman’s photo & my brother thought

I was trying to protect him from shame & that yellow

whiffle-ball bat, but mostly I was just a girl, post —

& curious.