by Scarlett Peterson
It takes more than a decade to know
why the tomboy and I hated each other
from fifth grade forward, her face popping
up in my people you may know
alongside another woman’s
like my profile picture, my lover laughing.
Look, I think, at all we saw in each other
so early— that half of ourselves that we hated,
how easy to recognize it elsewhere
before seeing it in the self.
How easy to hate what you are
before you know it.