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when I saw God
I trembled like a man I used the
wrong pronouns
—Kaveh Akbar
A boy, prettier than me, asked if I were truly
an image of God or just dust clotted from a womb.
I had the answers. They were wrapped somewhere
around the clenching of my palms, & he did get
them. At dinner
I bricked up my mouth hole with
the lord's prayer but didn't say amen because I
had learnt to question that, too. This boy, foolish boy,
wouldn't know God, his father, even if he
looked him in the face. Wonders why he can't
sniff rose flowers too, or wear frocked skirts.
Maybe I
am just uglier in the outside
& pale onion white in the inside; maybe
I am a sundial without a gnomon as a child without
his father. When a black
boy does it—it's someone did it. When ‘nother does,
it's he did it. Identity is future. "Future" from
the Latin futurus, meaning I am, but I still
don't know what.
Somewhere in 2060, a boy
is being promised a sister, but the robots aren't horny